Thursday, March 24, 2005
Today's Question
Where the hell was Sean Bean keeping his car keys, if the thieves who stole his Land Rover were able to extract them through his letter box with a fishing rod? On a little dish on the hall table?
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Today's Question
Has nobody told Lizzy Jagger she looks like a baboon's arse in the new Mango advertising campaign?
Bringing the British voter to heel
As the UK Tories propose ‘dog whistle’ issues, to bring Conservatives to heel, Queenie examines the mysteries of issue classification.
Queenie is highly amused at the latest spat between the Tories and New Labour in the UK, primarily because it has arisen over the nature of the Tories’ spanking new set of issues (although in reality, they are the same old issues dressed up to sound like new, but we’ll park that). These ‘dog whistle’ issues are designed to ‘bring the Tories’ traditional voting base to heel’, and have been imported from Australia by their new policy advisor.
This got Queenie thinking about issues in general. And how policy supremos and spinners develop issues. Queenie used to do this for a living, but she wasn’t very good at it, and her party lost the election and then she had to go out into the real world and forage for a living like everyone else. But this might be an opportunity for Queenie to get back onto the “pithy phrase” gravy train. So here goes a first sitdown into the saddle with a review of some of the more common Issue Types:
Dog whistle issues, sends a sharp message like a dog whistle, i.e. calls clearly to those intended, and goes unheard by others. Covers issues that raise levels of xenophobia, fear of terrorism, homophobia, or polarises debate around the right to life, that kind of thing.
Soccer mom issues, very similar to ‘dog whistle’ issues, but for people who live on Wisteria Lane. Can also be called ‘family values’.
Nanny state issues, driven by Type A personalities (think Bree Van de Camp) and focus on issues that impact on personal liberty such as driving regulations, alcohol awareness programmes, sunblock promotion campaigns, obesity awareness programmes, or Medicare.
Bread and butter issues, all political systems have them – tax, social welfare, economic policy, issues concerned with money and economic stability. Yawn.
Bread and jam issues, special tax cuts for the rich, special deals for Halliburton, tax exemption for horse stud owners in Ireland, that kind of thing.
Head in the sand issues, mostly concerned with geopolitics and its spin off industries – oil production, news production, the arms and transportation industries, the depleted uranium industry, the camouflage clothing industry, the ready meals industry, the ‘security’ industry, the kidnapping industry.
Hot button issues, deals with the economic and social impact of outsourcing low-grade clothes manufacturing jobs to Latin American and Asian sweatshops. No? Well, what then? Oh, extremely controversial issues…. Right! Sorry. Queenie said she wasn't very good at this.
Surrender monkey issues, less mainstream, these issues – anything to do with cultural imperialism as it relates to McDonald’s or the WTO, also economic tariffs and trade wars, the French film, wine, and cheese industries. For example - the absolute cheek of them, making a film like Sideways in Hollywood, would be a typical surrender monkey issue.
Also foreign policy issues concerned with making friends with/ bombing the hell out of any country that France feels it has pole position on e.g. the war on Iraq, the demands for Syria to withdraw, etc.
Of course we’re all friends again. Oh yeah.
1,000 flowers blooming issues, again, relating to foreign policy, particularly selling arms to Taiwan, ensuring democracy in Hong Kong, and promoting human rights in China.
Useless lazy, hippie, tree hugger issues, this can cover a wide range of domestic and international issues, which are not ‘hot button' and therefore result in the same five hundred people having to set up petitions and address rallies outside parliaments and Congress Buildings over and over again. A typical example of a useless lazy, hippie tree hugger issue would be global warming.
Queenie would love to hear of other issue categories.
Queenie is highly amused at the latest spat between the Tories and New Labour in the UK, primarily because it has arisen over the nature of the Tories’ spanking new set of issues (although in reality, they are the same old issues dressed up to sound like new, but we’ll park that). These ‘dog whistle’ issues are designed to ‘bring the Tories’ traditional voting base to heel’, and have been imported from Australia by their new policy advisor.
This got Queenie thinking about issues in general. And how policy supremos and spinners develop issues. Queenie used to do this for a living, but she wasn’t very good at it, and her party lost the election and then she had to go out into the real world and forage for a living like everyone else. But this might be an opportunity for Queenie to get back onto the “pithy phrase” gravy train. So here goes a first sitdown into the saddle with a review of some of the more common Issue Types:
Dog whistle issues, sends a sharp message like a dog whistle, i.e. calls clearly to those intended, and goes unheard by others. Covers issues that raise levels of xenophobia, fear of terrorism, homophobia, or polarises debate around the right to life, that kind of thing.
Soccer mom issues, very similar to ‘dog whistle’ issues, but for people who live on Wisteria Lane. Can also be called ‘family values’.
Nanny state issues, driven by Type A personalities (think Bree Van de Camp) and focus on issues that impact on personal liberty such as driving regulations, alcohol awareness programmes, sunblock promotion campaigns, obesity awareness programmes, or Medicare.
Bread and butter issues, all political systems have them – tax, social welfare, economic policy, issues concerned with money and economic stability. Yawn.
Bread and jam issues, special tax cuts for the rich, special deals for Halliburton, tax exemption for horse stud owners in Ireland, that kind of thing.
Head in the sand issues, mostly concerned with geopolitics and its spin off industries – oil production, news production, the arms and transportation industries, the depleted uranium industry, the camouflage clothing industry, the ready meals industry, the ‘security’ industry, the kidnapping industry.
Hot button issues, deals with the economic and social impact of outsourcing low-grade clothes manufacturing jobs to Latin American and Asian sweatshops. No? Well, what then? Oh, extremely controversial issues…. Right! Sorry. Queenie said she wasn't very good at this.
Surrender monkey issues, less mainstream, these issues – anything to do with cultural imperialism as it relates to McDonald’s or the WTO, also economic tariffs and trade wars, the French film, wine, and cheese industries. For example - the absolute cheek of them, making a film like Sideways in Hollywood, would be a typical surrender monkey issue.
Also foreign policy issues concerned with making friends with/ bombing the hell out of any country that France feels it has pole position on e.g. the war on Iraq, the demands for Syria to withdraw, etc.
Of course we’re all friends again. Oh yeah.
1,000 flowers blooming issues, again, relating to foreign policy, particularly selling arms to Taiwan, ensuring democracy in Hong Kong, and promoting human rights in China.
Useless lazy, hippie, tree hugger issues, this can cover a wide range of domestic and international issues, which are not ‘hot button' and therefore result in the same five hundred people having to set up petitions and address rallies outside parliaments and Congress Buildings over and over again. A typical example of a useless lazy, hippie tree hugger issue would be global warming.
Queenie would love to hear of other issue categories.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
NARRATOR 6: Five reasons why Queenie should go to Canada to continue her Quest
Well, boys and girls, we’ve completed our task. Well the first part anyways. Two instalments of NARRATOR up and off. Now we just have to find a couple of heroes for our top ten. I think we may leave Franks till next week.
1. Canadian society does not revolve around alcohol
Queenie never, ever thought she would hear herself say this, but she is tired of going to the pub. It started with the smoking ban. Having to hoist herself unsteadily to her feet and step out into the bitter night air in order to feed her habit is annoying. It reminds Queenie that she is an addict. And most importantly, each ten-minute period of being hassled or ignored by the assembled male smokers reminds Queenie that single Irish blokes are the most annoying tribe on the planet. Bar those Pakistani blokes who think it’s okay to gang rape young women as punishment for the sins of their brothers.
Alcohol is expensive and not compatible with driving. Which means a taxi fare on top of the alcohol. And the cost of running a car she doesn’t drive. Or drinking expensive water all night and finding her companions increasingly irritating as they get drunk.
Queenie would love to see her lovely friends in other contexts – eating out, walking, in each others houses, even playing bowls at a Leisureplex, for chrissakes. But she labours under that peculiarly Irish ennui that results in all social interaction taking place in a pub, rather than try something new. Maybe a year in Canada would knock it on the head.
Better stay away from Newfoundland for sure...
2. Queenie might get a date in Canada
Okay, Queenie is going to shout this out now. Yes, yes, yes, one of the reasons she is thinking of emigrating is because she CANNOT get a date in this godforsaken man desert of a town. She has spent the last three years trying to figure out why. There are several possibilities:
- There is something wrong with Queenie that men can spot that she can’t. Or she did something to a bloke once that is karmically kicking back onto her now. Don’t ask me, I’m a conniving manslut, and anyway, if I was straight I’d fancy you - NARRATOR
- All the good men are taken. If this is the case then Queenie wishes they’d all hurry up and get divorced. And turn – NARRATOR
- Queenie spends too much time in the pub, where it is nigh on impossible to meet a nice bloke (but quite easy to meet a crappy one who’ll do for the night and then you don’t have to worry about remembering their name). And you call me a conniving manslut! Harlot – NARRATOR. It was only the once – Queenie
- Queenie’s Alpha personality intimidates the bejaysus out of the average Irish single male. Yes, she did say Alpha personality. No, she’s not being arrogant, she’s being Alpha. Fuck off if you don’t like it. Queenie simultaneously makes and proves her own point - NARRATOR
Apparently, people in Canada ask other people out on things called dates. They don’t stare at them for eight months across a crowded smoking area and then lunge at them one night when they’re paralytic.
According to one of Queenie’s sources, Newfoundland’s a good bet.
3. Queenie is a nicer person when she is not in Ireland
This is a revelation that crept up on Queenie when she was travelling in recent years. When she’s abroad, Queenie turns into this funny, relaxed person who doesn’t rant about the health service until her friends’ eyes glaze over with boredom.
Of course, if Queenie was to be totally honest with herself (no easy thing for an Alpha female she’ll have you know), having a captive audience of bored overlanders is manna for Queenie’s neuroses and insatiable need for attention, and it might not be the same in Canada, where people are funny and relaxed generally and have better things to do than listen to her rant on in her stupid Irish accent.
But it’s worth a shot.
4. Queenie might be able to change career direction in Canada
One of the nice things about living in a small country is that Queenie can get on pretty handily in a little pond. And she is very proud of what she’s done to date. And not a little grateful for all the breaks she’s had. She’s not dissin’ on anyone here, oh no.
The problem is that the pond, being an eco-system, is quite tribal, or cliquey. Once a little fishy aligns herself with a particular breed of fish, career-wise, all the other fish only see the markings on her skin, and tend not to see, or even want to see, the underlying common characteristics all fish share.
So, if Queenie swam across the big ocean and lived in a newer, bigger, colder, fresher pond for a while, her new environment might change her markings and she could come home and change direction.
This one is a long shot, Queenie reckons.
This learning hit Queenie over the head with a thump a few days ago when she talked to one of her favourite academics and he said with not a little exasperation “What is it about you Irish that you have to go abroad to re-invent yourselves?”
Queenie said she’d make sure and tell him when she came back, if he hadn’t gone home to Australia by then, Professor Kettle!!
5. Queenie’s emotional baggage regarding her last, failed relationship might get sent to Alaska by mistake. Which would be NO BAD THING
Queenie doesn’t mind admitting that this one has her stumped. It’s not like he’s worth a whit of her time or head space. Actually, he doesn’t take up any of that anymore. It’s the sense of failure that gnaws at her still. The joys of being a perfectionist.
NARRATOR 5: Our intrepid heroes are thinking about heading into the sunset
Okay, I’m sick of this. I’ve been sat, perfectly manicured fingers poised over the keyboard, for a month now, while Queenie + Percy toss ideas round. But there’s a grey pall of writer’s block and cigarette smoke hanging over the apartment.
We’ve tried everything. We cleared out the mancupboard. Sean Bean has gone on holidays; up north to a little town by the sea. Nobody wanted to take on Clive Owen, so he’s gone fuck knows where.
We called in Colombo and she threw a few ideas into the pot. All Colombo-type ideas, mind, such as, could we do a bit of back-story because she was confused about the characters. Our intrepid heroes thought about that for a while. Nah! How confusing can three characters be? Anyways, we don’t want to remove that air of mystery we’ve engendered.
We took a few days off work to try and nail this episode. Queenie cleverly scuppered that by installing broadband the day before we started. Now it’s day four, not an inch of the internet unexplored and still nothing done.
I suggested we introduce a new character, a guy who’s appeared on the scene, well my scene in particular, in recent weeks. But Queenie felt that might confuse Colombo even more. I’m a bit pissed at that, I think Queenie just doesn’t want to share me with anyone.
So we’re sitting around drinking coffee, and nobody can leave the flat until this gets done.
Percy is sitting in a corner sharpening his sword. The sound is making my teeth scream. If ever there was a living metaphor for ‘I need to get laid’, then it’s Percy sitting in a corner sharpening his sword.
Queenie is trying to get her iTunes to come up with a publishable Party Shuffle, but it’s not happening. Why did she import the goddamn Bonnie Rait album if it offends her so much? I ask you.
Then Queenie had a brainwave. Let’s do a list she said. The internet is full of lists. And you can be funny and rant in a list. And you don’t have to worry about narrative or pacing or character development or anything.
“What kind of list”, says I. She mulls this over for a moment and then says, a list of reasons why we should cross the ocean to continue our Quest.
Percy stopped sharpening sharpish at the sound of that. He lifted his head, and there was such a piteous look of hope in his soft eyes that even I was moved.
“Cross the ocean?”
Queenie smiles over at him. “Yeah, dude.”
“To America?”
“No. Not to America, to Canada." I thought Percy was going to burst into tears, so Queenie said hurriedly,
It’s right beside America and it’s much nicer.”
"Right beside?"
"Yup."
"When are we going?"
Queenie shifted uncomfortably. We need to think about this, dude. And then we need to decide. And then we need to find a manbag that you can fit into.
"Soon, though?"
"Yes, Percy. Soon."
His smile could have powered Clare Island for several days.
We’ve tried everything. We cleared out the mancupboard. Sean Bean has gone on holidays; up north to a little town by the sea. Nobody wanted to take on Clive Owen, so he’s gone fuck knows where.
We called in Colombo and she threw a few ideas into the pot. All Colombo-type ideas, mind, such as, could we do a bit of back-story because she was confused about the characters. Our intrepid heroes thought about that for a while. Nah! How confusing can three characters be? Anyways, we don’t want to remove that air of mystery we’ve engendered.
We took a few days off work to try and nail this episode. Queenie cleverly scuppered that by installing broadband the day before we started. Now it’s day four, not an inch of the internet unexplored and still nothing done.
I suggested we introduce a new character, a guy who’s appeared on the scene, well my scene in particular, in recent weeks. But Queenie felt that might confuse Colombo even more. I’m a bit pissed at that, I think Queenie just doesn’t want to share me with anyone.
So we’re sitting around drinking coffee, and nobody can leave the flat until this gets done.
Percy is sitting in a corner sharpening his sword. The sound is making my teeth scream. If ever there was a living metaphor for ‘I need to get laid’, then it’s Percy sitting in a corner sharpening his sword.
Queenie is trying to get her iTunes to come up with a publishable Party Shuffle, but it’s not happening. Why did she import the goddamn Bonnie Rait album if it offends her so much? I ask you.
Then Queenie had a brainwave. Let’s do a list she said. The internet is full of lists. And you can be funny and rant in a list. And you don’t have to worry about narrative or pacing or character development or anything.
“What kind of list”, says I. She mulls this over for a moment and then says, a list of reasons why we should cross the ocean to continue our Quest.
Percy stopped sharpening sharpish at the sound of that. He lifted his head, and there was such a piteous look of hope in his soft eyes that even I was moved.
“Cross the ocean?”
Queenie smiles over at him. “Yeah, dude.”
“To America?”
“No. Not to America, to Canada." I thought Percy was going to burst into tears, so Queenie said hurriedly,
It’s right beside America and it’s much nicer.”
"Right beside?"
"Yup."
"When are we going?"
Queenie shifted uncomfortably. We need to think about this, dude. And then we need to decide. And then we need to find a manbag that you can fit into.
"Soon, though?"
"Yes, Percy. Soon."
His smile could have powered Clare Island for several days.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
The Glorious Republic of Chavezstan - a month in South America
This is an edited version of the article Queenie submitted to Frank's Apa. Queenie has told herself she cannot leave the house until she has posted at least two more instalments of NARRATOR, two more of the Hero Top 10, and written half of her Frank's article due at the end of the month. Hence the trawling through the c-drive, commenting on blogcritics, reading all her emails a zillion times.
GET ON WITH IT GIRL!
Day 1
I arrive in Caracas, tired, wired and four hours late for my meet with the group due to hitting the city centre at 5pm. Downtown Caracas is like downtown Dublin in one respect anyway. The taxi driver had ripped me off for the fare, nothing I could do, so I was quite happy to sit in his air-conditioned Taurus for three hours while he fumed.
My first night was managed by the group dynamic, so instead of enormous South American steaks and a trendy Caraceno salsa bar, which was what I hoped for, we end up going to a pizzeria in a shopping mall that had giant screens showing a baseball match and a soundtrack that included The Cranberries. Never mind the world being a village, the world, or the urban bit of it as far as I can see is an American shopping mall and we are all little mall rats. Truly depressing. Safe though. Thank God for that. The last thing you want when you travel six and a half thousand miles in a small tube beside a man that stinks of garlic is a bit of adventure. Nah! You want American cultural imperialism and Dolores Fuckin’ O’Riordan squawking her head off like she’s had her kidney stolen in a piazza made of tubular steel.
Day 2
First day on the truck. I pass the time reading Frank’s Apa. LOLOLOLOLOL at 10,000 Games of Cotillion.
Arrived in Puerto Colombia. Nice hotel. Lovely beach. Cocktail bars. Shops. Aaah. The trip is the wrong way round. That happens sometimes on these loop trips. If you get on a reverse loop, you have a reverse experience, where you have all the rewards stuff for the endurance stuff before you endure. So when you endure, everyone spends the whole time wishing they were back in the reward part of the trip. If you get my drift.
We lounge around in God’s own playground - greeny blue sea, white sand, a cute guy to climb up a palm tree I’m sitting under and get me a coconut whenever I want to look at his ass from that angle. Terrible really. Fuck the Med.
Overland trucking
We’re on a Dragoman Mercedes flatbed with 24 coach seats, eight of which face each other across small tables, which are for cards, Scrabble, writing your journal and playing drinking games.
Deep in the bowels of the truck are all the essential items for life in the developing world. Beer coolers, little chairs for sitting around drinking beer. Some cooking equipment. Tents. Disinfectant. A shovel to dig a little poo hole if you need one. Actually it’s attached to the door of the truck in case you have the runs on a driving day. Okay I’ll shut up now.
Day 5
On the road again. Most of the incidental music in Chavezstan is salsa, although you hear a lot of reggae as well. There are various types of salsa - the traditional, or Daniel O’Donnell salsa. You hear this in shops and crappy restaurants. Then there is the Miami type beat, which I think is called merengue or something like that, I can’t find anyone who speaks English and knows this shit to explain it to me. This is the Gloria Estefan type stuff you are used to hearing. The DO’D style is much slower. Then there is a kind of salsa/tinny-rap love child, ear splitting noise (gosh I am getting old) that dominates the charts and therefore the good bars. Like Alfredo’s in Merida. The cheapest beer in South America they claim. 10 cent for a bottle of import Heineken. I kid you not. In addition, Ven. traditional music is called joropo and is SHITE. Do not buy the World music CD. Ever.
We have to stay in Guanares, which is the Knock of Ven. Apparently, the Virgin appeared to an Indian tribal leader and his wife and told them to be nice to the Spaniards and adopt Christianity. And they worship this woman!! Guanares is a shithole. But I have a room of my own and a tv so I don’t care. We go to Papa Boris for dinner and have the usual Ven. food - an ENORMOUS steak, with rice, potatoes and plantains, a salad and the ubiquitous coleslaw. Dr. Atkins hasn’t made it here yet, thank goodness. I always wondered where coleslaw came from.
There are no bars to be found in Guanares. I don’t spend much time looking. It’s that horrible SA dump of a place, loads of rubbish, loads of skinny dogs and mean looking young guys eyeing your shoes (because you have brought nothing else of value out). I go back to my room to watch tv. I tell everyone I’m going to watch The West Wing. Some of them mock me. They should know better. Channel 32 - Warner Bros International. Every Tuesday at 10pm - they never imagined I’d have checked on the interweb. Puny humans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it’s the new series.
Day 6
Up over 5,000 metres and back down through the cloud forest to Merida. I am going to die. I don’t care how nice the fucking trees are. Nobody else feels a thing. A curse on mountain sickness, I’ll never see Ecuador at this rate. Merida is a lovely little Andean city nestling in a valley - the clouds come in by eleven every morning so it’s really cool and not too humid.
We go to Alfredo’s (see earlier entry). I get some salsa lessons from the bar men. Then we go clubbing with them after closing time. Eight of us in a taxi going God knows where, this is more like it. It was 10,000 bolivars ($4) in for the guys, free for ladyeeez, but you get EIGHT free beers with your entrance ticket. We traded them in for rum neat in a cup of crushed ice and get to it in earnest. Then we get invited into the upstairs bit, which is full of impossibly handsome young things grooving away in couples to salsa. When it becomes obvious that we are so drunk that we can’t do it the DJ takes pity on us and plays a Chemical Brothers set. Everyone is gob smacked at my unique freestyle.
On and on and on and on and on and on it went. We drank and drank and kept getting more sober as the dancing pumped the booze out of us as fast as we could pour it in. In desperation I take the bottle of rum out onto the dance floor. Serena from Isla de la Margerita takes pity on me and lends me her boyfriend. Did you know that it is actually possible to be leant back over a bloke’s knee until your head touches the floor while he does extremely strange (but nice) things to your lower back and still drink rum bedeneck. Bedehokey it is!!
Day 9
After a fantastic few days in Merida, with lots of EXTREME sports which I mostly participate in as a spectator, preferring to leave the death-defying stunts to others, we head to Lago Maracaibo, which is bigger than Switzerland, to watch the Catatambo lightening. This is a bizarre phenomenon whereby lightening flashes for about six hours a night, without the accompanying thunderclaps. It lights up the riverbanks in an eerie silver sheen. I see my first owl, sitting on a branch of a dead tree like a prop from Sleepy Hollow.
We stay in a stilted hut in the lake and Carmello our guide treats us to an evening of Joropo music. Hurrah. Then we leave civilisation forever, and drive to Los Llanos, which is the back arse of Chavezstan, a huge savannah that spreads from the Andes in the west all the way across the country to the Gran Sabana and the delta in the east. It takes us five days to drive across it. In the middle we spend three days in a flop house on the banks of the Rio Arupe which is the most maggoty, snake-infested, mosquito-ridden hole in which I have ever drawn breath. I endure (see earlier entry). I sleep in a hammock for 11 nights straight. Well crooked.
Sleeping in a Hammock
1 Hammocks generally live in groups, which means that Tim and Pedro will be sleeping on either side of you so wear ear plugs to shut out the unbelievably loud snoring. Pedro assures me it goes with his voice, so I am devastated (see earlier entry). Don’t put them in too far as they affect your balance and you won’t be able to get into the thing.
2 Bring EVERYTHING you need for the night so you don’t have to clamber out again.
3 Have a pee for the same reason.
4 Fight your way under the mossie net. If you are very drunk, ensure that Tim or Pedro put you under your mossie net. If they are very drunk you are screwed.
5 Sit sideways into the MIDDLE of the hammock, pulling the sides of it apart as you do so your bum falls neatly into the centre of gravity. You will descend suddenly as if you have broken the hammock. Don’t panic, you haven’t. Unless you hit the floor in which case you have. Repair hammock and start again.
6 Lie back DIAGONALLY
7 Swing your legs up and push the hammock fully open with your toes.
8 Put pillow against the side of your head and relax head against it. Do not try to put the pillow under your head
9 Put ‘Floating in Space’ on the iPod, it sounds kind of muffled with the ear plugs and all but that kind of adds to the ambience.
10 Close your eyes and enjoy the feeling of weightlessness that lasts about SIX seconds before you realise you forgot to wash your teeth.
Despite the enduring, Los Llanos is great. Loads of wildlife. I get up close to an anaconda. Like, it’s wrapped around my arms and chest. I have a very strange thought when I’m sitting there feeling it pulsate against my skin which I won’t share. Dolphins, snakes, alligators, iguanas, butterflies, howler monkeys (they sound like the wind coming over the Atlantic into Keel Strand on a January night on Achill Island. They do), sting rays, 12 types of piranhas, including a vegetarian type. It takes all kinds. Apparently Venezuelan women eat them if they’re trying to conceive. They taste okay, a bit bony. Fireflies, termites, vultures, owls, ospreys, egrets, annis which make a sound like boiling water, woodpeckers, toucans, parrots, pelicans all sitting in a row like the Supreme Court in session, terns, herons, kites, cormorants. I am in NG heaven. Our guide Alan is from Barbados. He’s hilarious.
Typical conversation with Alan
Alan: shows picture of stunning looking woman. “That’s my wife, she doesn’t understand me because (goes on for forty minutes).
Lorraine: “Oh that’s terrible. Why don’t you give up your job that entails leaving her on her own to develop these terrible suspicions about you and the Dutch tour guide you end up having to share a room with on trips but with whom nothing has ever happened (apart from in your HEAD)."
Alan: snuggles up a bit closer, a bit scarey in a flat-bottomed boat in a piranha infested river. “Oh, I can’t do that, what else could I do.”
Lorraine: “Get a job, aaaaarh.” Pirhana fish have a really nasty habit of jumping out of the water and hitting you on the side of the face when you’re edging away from a sex-starved Barbadian tour guide.
Alan: snuggles up a bit more to save me from the dying pirhana fish in the bottom of the boat. “I hope you don’t think I’m one of those blokes who tries to chat up single women by telling them their wife doesn’t understand them”
Lorraine: “God no.” Ignores the sniggering coming from everyone else on the boat who is thanking their lucky stars that they are a) not single, b) male, or c) blessed with superhuman diplomatic skills that enable them to look at the passing wildlife while imagining Alan being swallowed by his own anaconda.
He’s a great guide though. Days are spent on the river looking at wildlife and fishing. Evenings are spent on the river drinking rum and looking at the stars. I start to get that lovely feeling I get when I am away from cities and I can see the stars and everything is calm and balanced and the voices in my head have stayed in the city to catch up on a bit of shopping!
Day 17
Finally make it to Ciudad Bolivar in the east, which is the drop off point for Angel Falls and where we will spend Christmas. We cross the Orinocco. It a mighty big river. Bigger than the Mississippi. Bigger than the Rhine. There is only one bridge across it. Imagine that. And not a toll booth in sight.
We go to Posada La Casita. Pieter and Joakin run it. Joakin looks like a German version of Ed Norton in American History X, so I reckon he is a neo-Nazi on the run and Pieter was his Obsterfurher (this is a makey up word btw) in a previous life. The reason I think this is because Pieter got really drunk one night and said something anti-semitic which I was amazed at, as I have never experienced it before.
Along with Pieter and Joakin, and Pieter’s wife, there are about twenty kids and young women who seem to live here and all do bits of jobs and hang out generally and have a good time with the guests. There are cabins and a hammock room and space for our tents. There are three trucks here for Christmas, us, another Drago truck and 30 Dutch frat boys. Eeeeew. What’s the Dutch for pig ignorant jock?
Along with Pieter and Joakin and Pieter’s wife who is Venezuelan and her entire extended family and Joakin’s girlfriend who is over from Austria and the staff and all of us, there are the eight dogs. Led by Paco. Who is the BIGGEST rottweiler I have ever seen. I tell Pieter my father is a vet and he asks me to wash Paco as he smells a bit and he’s unabashedly anti-water. It takes three hours, on and off, but we are great friends after it, which is handy for when I want to get the Dutch jocks out of the pool so we can play volleyball. Have you ever seen a 65 kilo rottweiler clear a swimming pool? It’s hilarious. RUFF GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! SPLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH! AAAAAAAHHHHH SPLASH SPLASH SPLASH…….. SILENCE….
As well as the dogs, there are monkeys and deer and loads of parrots and a bar with a pool table and the internet and laundry and lovely food all day and a dvd collection and loads of cds and a dance floor and AN HONESTY SYSTEM which means you have to ‘fess up to what you eat, drink and interweb. Definitely too rich for most people’s blood.
Angel Falls
After an incredibly early start we end up spending four hours waiting for our Cessna in Cuidad Bolivar airport, which I knew we would, and eventually get off the ground by 10am. Once we were in the air, the pilot played a game on his mobile phone and we all stared out the window and pretended not to notice. There was plenty to see anyways. We cross vast scrublands, pitted with huge tepui (table mountains, think Table Mountain). Around the base of each is dense jungle, so tightly packed it looks like the florets on a head of broccoli. The tepuis are brown, flaring out slightly at the top with a completely different eco-system on the summit to that in the broccoli-base.
At Canaima (more anon) we disembark and board an even smaller Cessna for the over flight to Salto Angel. We follow the river up, through a canyon of tepui, with strange rock pillars, that look as if they’ve been placed there as sentries by some ancient civilisation. Then the clouds break and there it is, a slender sliver of silver against the brown of the rock. It is not so impressive by itself, but in its context, high above a hazy, green-brown landscape cut with mirrors of water and guarded by the tepui, it is very beautiful and I feel suitably small and insignificant.
It is even more crazy as you crane your neck to see it from below.
Back in Canaima, Miguel our guide takes us to the four salto/ waterfalls that pour millions of gallons of water into Canaima lake every day. This landscape provided the setting for films such as The Mission, Last of the Mohicans and Jurassic Park (var.), so it looks a little familiar. We board a native dug out and head over to Salto Sappo (frog waterfall), which we are going to climb. After a hot, slippery climb through an ant-infested forest (I have an ant thing, I’m not going into it here. Those who care were informed by email.), we arrive at a beach near the base. I swim out to the ferocious cascade. The water is a deep brown, dyed by the tannin in the leaves that are blown into the lake every autumn. My pale skin takes on an eerie orange glow under the water.
Up the rocks and then in behind the falls. It is like being in an enormous orange car wash. Exhilirating. A Dutch couple in our group ask me to take photos of them. Their poses are increasingly erotic. Our guide looks on, bemused. He is an Indian. He tells me his parents don’t speak Spanish. I ask him how they knew to call him Miguel then. Turns out his real name is Marida, his guide name is Miguel. Turns out that Indians aren’t allowed speak their own language in school. They have to speak Spanish. Hmmmmmmmmm.
Day 21
Back up to the beach to another resort that was so boring I have absolutely no record of it in my journal and cannot now remember what it was called. We kayaked around an island shaped like a cat that smelt of seagull guano. Then we went to a cave that stank of other type of bird guano. During our three hour tour of the cave, I mention to the guide that I am scared of rats. He spends most of the time trying to get them to run over my bare feet by scaring them with his torch. I am WELL ANNOYED. I don’t care that the cave looks like the Mines of Moria.
Back in La Casita, we have the HONESTY system for Christmas. Three days of drunken mayhem ensue. Eventually, the trucks leave for Brazil and I am left on my own with Pieter et al for a week. A bit of peace. A lot of iPod. ‘Twas a great trip.
(see guys, I left out all the 'interesting' bits - aren't I good!)
GET ON WITH IT GIRL!
Day 1
I arrive in Caracas, tired, wired and four hours late for my meet with the group due to hitting the city centre at 5pm. Downtown Caracas is like downtown Dublin in one respect anyway. The taxi driver had ripped me off for the fare, nothing I could do, so I was quite happy to sit in his air-conditioned Taurus for three hours while he fumed.
My first night was managed by the group dynamic, so instead of enormous South American steaks and a trendy Caraceno salsa bar, which was what I hoped for, we end up going to a pizzeria in a shopping mall that had giant screens showing a baseball match and a soundtrack that included The Cranberries. Never mind the world being a village, the world, or the urban bit of it as far as I can see is an American shopping mall and we are all little mall rats. Truly depressing. Safe though. Thank God for that. The last thing you want when you travel six and a half thousand miles in a small tube beside a man that stinks of garlic is a bit of adventure. Nah! You want American cultural imperialism and Dolores Fuckin’ O’Riordan squawking her head off like she’s had her kidney stolen in a piazza made of tubular steel.
Day 2
First day on the truck. I pass the time reading Frank’s Apa. LOLOLOLOLOL at 10,000 Games of Cotillion.
Arrived in Puerto Colombia. Nice hotel. Lovely beach. Cocktail bars. Shops. Aaah. The trip is the wrong way round. That happens sometimes on these loop trips. If you get on a reverse loop, you have a reverse experience, where you have all the rewards stuff for the endurance stuff before you endure. So when you endure, everyone spends the whole time wishing they were back in the reward part of the trip. If you get my drift.
We lounge around in God’s own playground - greeny blue sea, white sand, a cute guy to climb up a palm tree I’m sitting under and get me a coconut whenever I want to look at his ass from that angle. Terrible really. Fuck the Med.
Overland trucking
We’re on a Dragoman Mercedes flatbed with 24 coach seats, eight of which face each other across small tables, which are for cards, Scrabble, writing your journal and playing drinking games.
Deep in the bowels of the truck are all the essential items for life in the developing world. Beer coolers, little chairs for sitting around drinking beer. Some cooking equipment. Tents. Disinfectant. A shovel to dig a little poo hole if you need one. Actually it’s attached to the door of the truck in case you have the runs on a driving day. Okay I’ll shut up now.
Day 5
On the road again. Most of the incidental music in Chavezstan is salsa, although you hear a lot of reggae as well. There are various types of salsa - the traditional, or Daniel O’Donnell salsa. You hear this in shops and crappy restaurants. Then there is the Miami type beat, which I think is called merengue or something like that, I can’t find anyone who speaks English and knows this shit to explain it to me. This is the Gloria Estefan type stuff you are used to hearing. The DO’D style is much slower. Then there is a kind of salsa/tinny-rap love child, ear splitting noise (gosh I am getting old) that dominates the charts and therefore the good bars. Like Alfredo’s in Merida. The cheapest beer in South America they claim. 10 cent for a bottle of import Heineken. I kid you not. In addition, Ven. traditional music is called joropo and is SHITE. Do not buy the World music CD. Ever.
We have to stay in Guanares, which is the Knock of Ven. Apparently, the Virgin appeared to an Indian tribal leader and his wife and told them to be nice to the Spaniards and adopt Christianity. And they worship this woman!! Guanares is a shithole. But I have a room of my own and a tv so I don’t care. We go to Papa Boris for dinner and have the usual Ven. food - an ENORMOUS steak, with rice, potatoes and plantains, a salad and the ubiquitous coleslaw. Dr. Atkins hasn’t made it here yet, thank goodness. I always wondered where coleslaw came from.
There are no bars to be found in Guanares. I don’t spend much time looking. It’s that horrible SA dump of a place, loads of rubbish, loads of skinny dogs and mean looking young guys eyeing your shoes (because you have brought nothing else of value out). I go back to my room to watch tv. I tell everyone I’m going to watch The West Wing. Some of them mock me. They should know better. Channel 32 - Warner Bros International. Every Tuesday at 10pm - they never imagined I’d have checked on the interweb. Puny humans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it’s the new series.
Day 6
Up over 5,000 metres and back down through the cloud forest to Merida. I am going to die. I don’t care how nice the fucking trees are. Nobody else feels a thing. A curse on mountain sickness, I’ll never see Ecuador at this rate. Merida is a lovely little Andean city nestling in a valley - the clouds come in by eleven every morning so it’s really cool and not too humid.
We go to Alfredo’s (see earlier entry). I get some salsa lessons from the bar men. Then we go clubbing with them after closing time. Eight of us in a taxi going God knows where, this is more like it. It was 10,000 bolivars ($4) in for the guys, free for ladyeeez, but you get EIGHT free beers with your entrance ticket. We traded them in for rum neat in a cup of crushed ice and get to it in earnest. Then we get invited into the upstairs bit, which is full of impossibly handsome young things grooving away in couples to salsa. When it becomes obvious that we are so drunk that we can’t do it the DJ takes pity on us and plays a Chemical Brothers set. Everyone is gob smacked at my unique freestyle.
On and on and on and on and on and on it went. We drank and drank and kept getting more sober as the dancing pumped the booze out of us as fast as we could pour it in. In desperation I take the bottle of rum out onto the dance floor. Serena from Isla de la Margerita takes pity on me and lends me her boyfriend. Did you know that it is actually possible to be leant back over a bloke’s knee until your head touches the floor while he does extremely strange (but nice) things to your lower back and still drink rum bedeneck. Bedehokey it is!!
Day 9
After a fantastic few days in Merida, with lots of EXTREME sports which I mostly participate in as a spectator, preferring to leave the death-defying stunts to others, we head to Lago Maracaibo, which is bigger than Switzerland, to watch the Catatambo lightening. This is a bizarre phenomenon whereby lightening flashes for about six hours a night, without the accompanying thunderclaps. It lights up the riverbanks in an eerie silver sheen. I see my first owl, sitting on a branch of a dead tree like a prop from Sleepy Hollow.
We stay in a stilted hut in the lake and Carmello our guide treats us to an evening of Joropo music. Hurrah. Then we leave civilisation forever, and drive to Los Llanos, which is the back arse of Chavezstan, a huge savannah that spreads from the Andes in the west all the way across the country to the Gran Sabana and the delta in the east. It takes us five days to drive across it. In the middle we spend three days in a flop house on the banks of the Rio Arupe which is the most maggoty, snake-infested, mosquito-ridden hole in which I have ever drawn breath. I endure (see earlier entry). I sleep in a hammock for 11 nights straight. Well crooked.
Sleeping in a Hammock
1 Hammocks generally live in groups, which means that Tim and Pedro will be sleeping on either side of you so wear ear plugs to shut out the unbelievably loud snoring. Pedro assures me it goes with his voice, so I am devastated (see earlier entry). Don’t put them in too far as they affect your balance and you won’t be able to get into the thing.
2 Bring EVERYTHING you need for the night so you don’t have to clamber out again.
3 Have a pee for the same reason.
4 Fight your way under the mossie net. If you are very drunk, ensure that Tim or Pedro put you under your mossie net. If they are very drunk you are screwed.
5 Sit sideways into the MIDDLE of the hammock, pulling the sides of it apart as you do so your bum falls neatly into the centre of gravity. You will descend suddenly as if you have broken the hammock. Don’t panic, you haven’t. Unless you hit the floor in which case you have. Repair hammock and start again.
6 Lie back DIAGONALLY
7 Swing your legs up and push the hammock fully open with your toes.
8 Put pillow against the side of your head and relax head against it. Do not try to put the pillow under your head
9 Put ‘Floating in Space’ on the iPod, it sounds kind of muffled with the ear plugs and all but that kind of adds to the ambience.
10 Close your eyes and enjoy the feeling of weightlessness that lasts about SIX seconds before you realise you forgot to wash your teeth.
Despite the enduring, Los Llanos is great. Loads of wildlife. I get up close to an anaconda. Like, it’s wrapped around my arms and chest. I have a very strange thought when I’m sitting there feeling it pulsate against my skin which I won’t share. Dolphins, snakes, alligators, iguanas, butterflies, howler monkeys (they sound like the wind coming over the Atlantic into Keel Strand on a January night on Achill Island. They do), sting rays, 12 types of piranhas, including a vegetarian type. It takes all kinds. Apparently Venezuelan women eat them if they’re trying to conceive. They taste okay, a bit bony. Fireflies, termites, vultures, owls, ospreys, egrets, annis which make a sound like boiling water, woodpeckers, toucans, parrots, pelicans all sitting in a row like the Supreme Court in session, terns, herons, kites, cormorants. I am in NG heaven. Our guide Alan is from Barbados. He’s hilarious.
Typical conversation with Alan
Alan: shows picture of stunning looking woman. “That’s my wife, she doesn’t understand me because (goes on for forty minutes).
Lorraine: “Oh that’s terrible. Why don’t you give up your job that entails leaving her on her own to develop these terrible suspicions about you and the Dutch tour guide you end up having to share a room with on trips but with whom nothing has ever happened (apart from in your HEAD)."
Alan: snuggles up a bit closer, a bit scarey in a flat-bottomed boat in a piranha infested river. “Oh, I can’t do that, what else could I do.”
Lorraine: “Get a job, aaaaarh.” Pirhana fish have a really nasty habit of jumping out of the water and hitting you on the side of the face when you’re edging away from a sex-starved Barbadian tour guide.
Alan: snuggles up a bit more to save me from the dying pirhana fish in the bottom of the boat. “I hope you don’t think I’m one of those blokes who tries to chat up single women by telling them their wife doesn’t understand them”
Lorraine: “God no.” Ignores the sniggering coming from everyone else on the boat who is thanking their lucky stars that they are a) not single, b) male, or c) blessed with superhuman diplomatic skills that enable them to look at the passing wildlife while imagining Alan being swallowed by his own anaconda.
He’s a great guide though. Days are spent on the river looking at wildlife and fishing. Evenings are spent on the river drinking rum and looking at the stars. I start to get that lovely feeling I get when I am away from cities and I can see the stars and everything is calm and balanced and the voices in my head have stayed in the city to catch up on a bit of shopping!
Day 17
Finally make it to Ciudad Bolivar in the east, which is the drop off point for Angel Falls and where we will spend Christmas. We cross the Orinocco. It a mighty big river. Bigger than the Mississippi. Bigger than the Rhine. There is only one bridge across it. Imagine that. And not a toll booth in sight.
We go to Posada La Casita. Pieter and Joakin run it. Joakin looks like a German version of Ed Norton in American History X, so I reckon he is a neo-Nazi on the run and Pieter was his Obsterfurher (this is a makey up word btw) in a previous life. The reason I think this is because Pieter got really drunk one night and said something anti-semitic which I was amazed at, as I have never experienced it before.
Along with Pieter and Joakin, and Pieter’s wife, there are about twenty kids and young women who seem to live here and all do bits of jobs and hang out generally and have a good time with the guests. There are cabins and a hammock room and space for our tents. There are three trucks here for Christmas, us, another Drago truck and 30 Dutch frat boys. Eeeeew. What’s the Dutch for pig ignorant jock?
Along with Pieter and Joakin and Pieter’s wife who is Venezuelan and her entire extended family and Joakin’s girlfriend who is over from Austria and the staff and all of us, there are the eight dogs. Led by Paco. Who is the BIGGEST rottweiler I have ever seen. I tell Pieter my father is a vet and he asks me to wash Paco as he smells a bit and he’s unabashedly anti-water. It takes three hours, on and off, but we are great friends after it, which is handy for when I want to get the Dutch jocks out of the pool so we can play volleyball. Have you ever seen a 65 kilo rottweiler clear a swimming pool? It’s hilarious. RUFF GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! SPLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH! AAAAAAAHHHHH SPLASH SPLASH SPLASH…….. SILENCE….
As well as the dogs, there are monkeys and deer and loads of parrots and a bar with a pool table and the internet and laundry and lovely food all day and a dvd collection and loads of cds and a dance floor and AN HONESTY SYSTEM which means you have to ‘fess up to what you eat, drink and interweb. Definitely too rich for most people’s blood.
Angel Falls
After an incredibly early start we end up spending four hours waiting for our Cessna in Cuidad Bolivar airport, which I knew we would, and eventually get off the ground by 10am. Once we were in the air, the pilot played a game on his mobile phone and we all stared out the window and pretended not to notice. There was plenty to see anyways. We cross vast scrublands, pitted with huge tepui (table mountains, think Table Mountain). Around the base of each is dense jungle, so tightly packed it looks like the florets on a head of broccoli. The tepuis are brown, flaring out slightly at the top with a completely different eco-system on the summit to that in the broccoli-base.
At Canaima (more anon) we disembark and board an even smaller Cessna for the over flight to Salto Angel. We follow the river up, through a canyon of tepui, with strange rock pillars, that look as if they’ve been placed there as sentries by some ancient civilisation. Then the clouds break and there it is, a slender sliver of silver against the brown of the rock. It is not so impressive by itself, but in its context, high above a hazy, green-brown landscape cut with mirrors of water and guarded by the tepui, it is very beautiful and I feel suitably small and insignificant.
It is even more crazy as you crane your neck to see it from below.
Back in Canaima, Miguel our guide takes us to the four salto/ waterfalls that pour millions of gallons of water into Canaima lake every day. This landscape provided the setting for films such as The Mission, Last of the Mohicans and Jurassic Park (var.), so it looks a little familiar. We board a native dug out and head over to Salto Sappo (frog waterfall), which we are going to climb. After a hot, slippery climb through an ant-infested forest (I have an ant thing, I’m not going into it here. Those who care were informed by email.), we arrive at a beach near the base. I swim out to the ferocious cascade. The water is a deep brown, dyed by the tannin in the leaves that are blown into the lake every autumn. My pale skin takes on an eerie orange glow under the water.
Up the rocks and then in behind the falls. It is like being in an enormous orange car wash. Exhilirating. A Dutch couple in our group ask me to take photos of them. Their poses are increasingly erotic. Our guide looks on, bemused. He is an Indian. He tells me his parents don’t speak Spanish. I ask him how they knew to call him Miguel then. Turns out his real name is Marida, his guide name is Miguel. Turns out that Indians aren’t allowed speak their own language in school. They have to speak Spanish. Hmmmmmmmmm.
Day 21
Back up to the beach to another resort that was so boring I have absolutely no record of it in my journal and cannot now remember what it was called. We kayaked around an island shaped like a cat that smelt of seagull guano. Then we went to a cave that stank of other type of bird guano. During our three hour tour of the cave, I mention to the guide that I am scared of rats. He spends most of the time trying to get them to run over my bare feet by scaring them with his torch. I am WELL ANNOYED. I don’t care that the cave looks like the Mines of Moria.
Back in La Casita, we have the HONESTY system for Christmas. Three days of drunken mayhem ensue. Eventually, the trucks leave for Brazil and I am left on my own with Pieter et al for a week. A bit of peace. A lot of iPod. ‘Twas a great trip.
(see guys, I left out all the 'interesting' bits - aren't I good!)
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
The A - Z of St. Patrick's Day (SPD)
Sure you have to love the Irish, seein’ as we can’t seem to get on with each other.
Achill Island, west coast of Ireland. The setting for many miserable SPDs for Queenie, watching Atlantic storms hurl themselves sideways against the windows of some dilapidated summer home she’s rented. In March. With a three mile walk to the warm pub to watch the returning emigrants get beaten up by the locals.
Boston, next parish to Achill, also celebrates St. Patrick’s Day. Why? Also beer, which is green on SPD.
Cheltenham, they speak of nothing else on SPD. And you thought it was Christianity. No, no, it’s a racing festival in England, upon which thousands of Irishmen and some women descend annually to back horses, win money, lose money, launder money, hatch tax evasion schemes involving horses, play poker, sleep in their cars, sleep in their clothes, throw up on their shoes, and generally have what is known as ‘a good time’.
Drinking, what St. Patrick’s Day is really, really all about.
England, the reason we cry when we’re drunk.
Feck! The twenty first century Begorrah! From the comedy show Fr. Ted. As in what Fr. Jack roars when he’s drunk. Which is always. You know it’s St. Patrick’s Day when perfectly normal, uptight, circumspect English people walk up and shout FECK into your face.
Green, the colour of Ireland, the colour of money, the colour of the Hudson river on SPD, the colour of the McDonalds milkshakes, the colour of Glasgow Celtic football club, the colour of shamrock, the colour of Yankee tourists’ trousers. There are forty shades, but on SPD, there is only one, lurid emerald.
Hibernians, Ancient Order of. Queenie would just like to point out that they’re American. And apologise to all gay people on behalf of her race.
Ireland, Hibernia, ancient kingdom of the Celts. Oh wait, that’s Wales.
Joviality, it all starts off well enough when the parade kicks off at midday.
Kicking the drunken shit out of each other on the streets of Dublin, by about 4pm generally. The Mayor begged off licences to open later this year, to reduce the mayhem, but they laughed at the idea as they boarded the plane to Cheltenham to spend last year’s takings.
Lough Derg, also known as St. Patrick’s Purgatory. An island in the middle of a lake in the north west of Ireland, where penitents spend three rainsodden days and nights barefoot, midge-bitten and starving. Except for black tea and crackers. A good place to spend SPD.
Majorettes, from America, freezing their cute butts off as they twirl through the swirling rain during the big parade. A big draw for the local lads.
Nostalgia, an emotional rollercoaster that overwhelms an Irish person after ten pints of green beer, causing him or her to track down and hug the four terrified Dutch tourists who made the mistake of thinking the St. Patrick’s Festival in Dublin would be an interesting cultural event.
Old days, The, we had no money, but we were happy. Sure.
Patrick, St., what can Queenie say. Our national saint. Bringer of Christianity. Abolisher of women’s rights. He banished snakes from Ireland. Except for the two-legged ones. But they’re all in Cheltenham this weekend.
Queenie, she loves her country really. Just not on SPD.
Robert McCartney, his sisters and partner Breegeen will be in the White House this SPD. But Robert won’t. Because someone cut his throat with a lemon slicing knife.
Shamrock. In the White House. And Shinners. Not this year, though, lads!
Tara, Hill of, ancient Celtic site upon which St. Patrick led a sit in (with bonfire) in an attempt to break the power of the old gods. The new god in Ireland, money, is about to build a motorway through it.
Universal, the celebration of SPD. With forty four million people of Irish descent scattered across the globe, why the hell not.
Vomit, oceans of it in Dublin, much of it green. By about 10pm.
Wales, home of St. Patrick. Opponents on Saturday in the final match of the Six Nations Rugby tournament. We put up with him, lads, give us a win!!
Xhibitionist, a tendency displayed by most Irish people at the drop of a hat. Preferably of the lurid, green leprechaun variety.
Young Irish women, seventy five per cent of whom binge drink regularly. By young, Queenie means fifteen year olds.
Zzzzzzzzz, Queenie’s off to bed now, wake her up when it’s over.
Achill Island, west coast of Ireland. The setting for many miserable SPDs for Queenie, watching Atlantic storms hurl themselves sideways against the windows of some dilapidated summer home she’s rented. In March. With a three mile walk to the warm pub to watch the returning emigrants get beaten up by the locals.
Boston, next parish to Achill, also celebrates St. Patrick’s Day. Why? Also beer, which is green on SPD.
Cheltenham, they speak of nothing else on SPD. And you thought it was Christianity. No, no, it’s a racing festival in England, upon which thousands of Irishmen and some women descend annually to back horses, win money, lose money, launder money, hatch tax evasion schemes involving horses, play poker, sleep in their cars, sleep in their clothes, throw up on their shoes, and generally have what is known as ‘a good time’.
Drinking, what St. Patrick’s Day is really, really all about.
England, the reason we cry when we’re drunk.
Feck! The twenty first century Begorrah! From the comedy show Fr. Ted. As in what Fr. Jack roars when he’s drunk. Which is always. You know it’s St. Patrick’s Day when perfectly normal, uptight, circumspect English people walk up and shout FECK into your face.
Green, the colour of Ireland, the colour of money, the colour of the Hudson river on SPD, the colour of the McDonalds milkshakes, the colour of Glasgow Celtic football club, the colour of shamrock, the colour of Yankee tourists’ trousers. There are forty shades, but on SPD, there is only one, lurid emerald.
Hibernians, Ancient Order of. Queenie would just like to point out that they’re American. And apologise to all gay people on behalf of her race.
Ireland, Hibernia, ancient kingdom of the Celts. Oh wait, that’s Wales.
Joviality, it all starts off well enough when the parade kicks off at midday.
Kicking the drunken shit out of each other on the streets of Dublin, by about 4pm generally. The Mayor begged off licences to open later this year, to reduce the mayhem, but they laughed at the idea as they boarded the plane to Cheltenham to spend last year’s takings.
Lough Derg, also known as St. Patrick’s Purgatory. An island in the middle of a lake in the north west of Ireland, where penitents spend three rainsodden days and nights barefoot, midge-bitten and starving. Except for black tea and crackers. A good place to spend SPD.
Majorettes, from America, freezing their cute butts off as they twirl through the swirling rain during the big parade. A big draw for the local lads.
Nostalgia, an emotional rollercoaster that overwhelms an Irish person after ten pints of green beer, causing him or her to track down and hug the four terrified Dutch tourists who made the mistake of thinking the St. Patrick’s Festival in Dublin would be an interesting cultural event.
Old days, The, we had no money, but we were happy. Sure.
Patrick, St., what can Queenie say. Our national saint. Bringer of Christianity. Abolisher of women’s rights. He banished snakes from Ireland. Except for the two-legged ones. But they’re all in Cheltenham this weekend.
Queenie, she loves her country really. Just not on SPD.
Robert McCartney, his sisters and partner Breegeen will be in the White House this SPD. But Robert won’t. Because someone cut his throat with a lemon slicing knife.
Shamrock. In the White House. And Shinners. Not this year, though, lads!
Tara, Hill of, ancient Celtic site upon which St. Patrick led a sit in (with bonfire) in an attempt to break the power of the old gods. The new god in Ireland, money, is about to build a motorway through it.
Universal, the celebration of SPD. With forty four million people of Irish descent scattered across the globe, why the hell not.
Vomit, oceans of it in Dublin, much of it green. By about 10pm.
Wales, home of St. Patrick. Opponents on Saturday in the final match of the Six Nations Rugby tournament. We put up with him, lads, give us a win!!
Xhibitionist, a tendency displayed by most Irish people at the drop of a hat. Preferably of the lurid, green leprechaun variety.
Young Irish women, seventy five per cent of whom binge drink regularly. By young, Queenie means fifteen year olds.
Zzzzzzzzz, Queenie’s off to bed now, wake her up when it’s over.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Book Review: There and Back Again, An Actor’s Tale, by Sean Astin, with Joe Layden
Queenie bought this book because she is interested in how Peter Jackson got all the egos necessary to make the Lord of the Rings firstly, to New Zealand, and secondly, to behave. (Apparently, he just lied to them all and told them he’d let them leave after a few months). And although she knew most of the book would be Sean Astin’s take on events, she didn’t think it would be quite as self-centred as it is. Even though Trish Byrne pointed out quite sensibly that he is a luvvie.
Those who know and love Queenie know she can be very neurotic, particularly when she’s in her flowers, so she empathises with a certain amount of precocious negativity and mememe-ness, but Sean Astin beats Banagher, as they say in South Offaly-East Galway. And he doesn’t have his flowers because he’s a bloke.
What he does have is a childhood over which hung the shadow of depression, which again Queenie can empathise with. But as Queenie walks through the dark forest of life, she keeps bumping into people who carry the same shadow on their brow. And they don't whinge to the same extent.
Queenie has three comments to make about this book.
Firstly, Mrs. Sean Astin is a saint and should be beatified by the Pope sharpish, before he pops his clogs. To give Mr. Astin his due, he seems to realise this.
Secondly, if Viggo Mortensen is a rabid, radical political activist, then Queenie is Enver Hoxha.
Thirdly, Astin spends a large part of the book trying to figure out the best way to get ahead in life. Most of us spend time doing that, but publishing a book about it is maybe not the cleverest move. Lots of ammunition in here for clever, manipulative people. Which is most successful people.
Queenie finds the best way to get ahead in life is to shut the fuck up and listen and learn. And ignore people if they tell you to go away. Well, that’s what works for her anyway. In work, mind. She’s on top of her personal life. Nothing to learn there.
No, nothing – Percy.
Those who know and love Queenie know she can be very neurotic, particularly when she’s in her flowers, so she empathises with a certain amount of precocious negativity and mememe-ness, but Sean Astin beats Banagher, as they say in South Offaly-East Galway. And he doesn’t have his flowers because he’s a bloke.
What he does have is a childhood over which hung the shadow of depression, which again Queenie can empathise with. But as Queenie walks through the dark forest of life, she keeps bumping into people who carry the same shadow on their brow. And they don't whinge to the same extent.
Queenie has three comments to make about this book.
Firstly, Mrs. Sean Astin is a saint and should be beatified by the Pope sharpish, before he pops his clogs. To give Mr. Astin his due, he seems to realise this.
Secondly, if Viggo Mortensen is a rabid, radical political activist, then Queenie is Enver Hoxha.
Thirdly, Astin spends a large part of the book trying to figure out the best way to get ahead in life. Most of us spend time doing that, but publishing a book about it is maybe not the cleverest move. Lots of ammunition in here for clever, manipulative people. Which is most successful people.
Queenie finds the best way to get ahead in life is to shut the fuck up and listen and learn. And ignore people if they tell you to go away. Well, that’s what works for her anyway. In work, mind. She’s on top of her personal life. Nothing to learn there.
No, nothing – Percy.
Book Review: The Memory of Running, by Ron McLarty
I was a running boy. That’s what our next door neighbour Ethel Sunman called me. I went from one place to another like a duck somebody was shooting at. I made beelines.
Smithson Ide is alone. Forty three years old, an alcoholic, overweight, chain smoker, with a dead end job in quality control, and a stomach full of bullet holes from a tour in Vietnam, he has just lost his parents in a car accident. They died without ever finding out what happened to Smithy’s sister Bethany, whose madness dragged her onto the streets years previously.
In her first sitting, Queenie got as far as the night after Mom and Pop’s funeral, and nearly didn’t pick up the book again. Not even when Smithy went off on one and cycled through Hope Valley and into the Wood River on his childhood Raleigh. The use of words like providence, hope and the inelegant dumping of the principal character into the dark wood (river) that presages all quests were a little clunky. And the overwhelming self-pity and guilt of Smithy were wearying.
However, she is glad she picked the book up again. Smithy’s Quest, as he cycles from Providence, Rhode Island to Los Angeles, first on his boyhood Raleigh bike, and then on a new Moto, bought for him in Providence, Indiana by a doctor who had him beaten up mistakenly, is one of the better American road trip novels she has read.
I think I’m on a Quest. My friend Norma says I’m on a Quest. I know it’s strange. I used to be fat. Smithy tells a man who picks him up one night in Arizona.
Smithy explains that he is on his way to be reunited with Bethany, whose remains have been identified by dental records sent by Pop before he died. The man responds by sharing his own tragedy with his strange passenger. The novel is peopled with interesting characters who help put Smithy back together again, from ‘old full and juicy’, the disillusioned priest who provisions him for his journey, to Carl, the terminally ill flower grower who knocks him down in Indiana.
Smithy’s Quest is also internal. The book flashes back and forth between Smithy’s past and his journey. The inevitability of Bethany’s disintegration hangs over Smithy’s childhood, his present, and over us the reader. Her bouts of madness are presaged by her Voice, who only manifests itself to the boy, too young to save his sister and too small to be listened to.
In addition to his grief over Bethany, Smithy’s guilt over how he treated Norma, his childhood friend re-emerges as he sobers up and gets fit. After an accident confined Norma to a wheelchair, the Ides, overwhelmed by their struggle with Bethany’s madness, ignored her presence in the house next door.
I knew that Norma watched too, behind those fluttering venetian blinds, watched the movement in the kitchen and the long shadows we threw. I thought about Norma that night and how we had all stopped going over, little by little, until for everybody it was too late.
Now Smithy’s isolation and loneliness opens the door of his shame to Norma. She uses this opportunity to reach out to him and help him on his Quest. Her presence, in a series of late night phone calls, drives him on.
This novel is about loss. It is primarily about the loss of the self, whether to madness or the cure for madness, to alcohol and obesity, or to grief and isolation. The overwhelming loss borne by so many ordinary decent folk is so thick at the beginning of the novel, it is almost impossible to wade through the opening chapters. It is only as Smithy finds his rhythm on the old Raleigh and starts to rebuild his relationship with Norma, and with himself, that Queenie could lift her head off the gutter and look at the stars. But that’s how loss is, a seemingly unending struggle with a new routine until finally it becomes manageable, then imperceptibly, something to rely on again.
And so we pick ourselves up and move ourselves along. Slowly at first, then gathering pace.
A very elegant and rhythmic account of how people can slowly unfold themselves, no matter how crushed, given a chance.
Ron McLarty is a well known character actor on American television and it shows in the many well drawn cameos in the book. Like so many novels these days, it is written with an eye to the screenplay. No crime in itself, and Queenie will spend many happy hours trying to cast this one in her head.
Sean Astin could rehabilitate himself in Queenie's eyes with the role of Smithy for a start (see review).
Mags – it’s winging its way to Birr as Queenie writes! Thanks!
Smithson Ide is alone. Forty three years old, an alcoholic, overweight, chain smoker, with a dead end job in quality control, and a stomach full of bullet holes from a tour in Vietnam, he has just lost his parents in a car accident. They died without ever finding out what happened to Smithy’s sister Bethany, whose madness dragged her onto the streets years previously.
In her first sitting, Queenie got as far as the night after Mom and Pop’s funeral, and nearly didn’t pick up the book again. Not even when Smithy went off on one and cycled through Hope Valley and into the Wood River on his childhood Raleigh. The use of words like providence, hope and the inelegant dumping of the principal character into the dark wood (river) that presages all quests were a little clunky. And the overwhelming self-pity and guilt of Smithy were wearying.
However, she is glad she picked the book up again. Smithy’s Quest, as he cycles from Providence, Rhode Island to Los Angeles, first on his boyhood Raleigh bike, and then on a new Moto, bought for him in Providence, Indiana by a doctor who had him beaten up mistakenly, is one of the better American road trip novels she has read.
I think I’m on a Quest. My friend Norma says I’m on a Quest. I know it’s strange. I used to be fat. Smithy tells a man who picks him up one night in Arizona.
Smithy explains that he is on his way to be reunited with Bethany, whose remains have been identified by dental records sent by Pop before he died. The man responds by sharing his own tragedy with his strange passenger. The novel is peopled with interesting characters who help put Smithy back together again, from ‘old full and juicy’, the disillusioned priest who provisions him for his journey, to Carl, the terminally ill flower grower who knocks him down in Indiana.
Smithy’s Quest is also internal. The book flashes back and forth between Smithy’s past and his journey. The inevitability of Bethany’s disintegration hangs over Smithy’s childhood, his present, and over us the reader. Her bouts of madness are presaged by her Voice, who only manifests itself to the boy, too young to save his sister and too small to be listened to.
In addition to his grief over Bethany, Smithy’s guilt over how he treated Norma, his childhood friend re-emerges as he sobers up and gets fit. After an accident confined Norma to a wheelchair, the Ides, overwhelmed by their struggle with Bethany’s madness, ignored her presence in the house next door.
I knew that Norma watched too, behind those fluttering venetian blinds, watched the movement in the kitchen and the long shadows we threw. I thought about Norma that night and how we had all stopped going over, little by little, until for everybody it was too late.
Now Smithy’s isolation and loneliness opens the door of his shame to Norma. She uses this opportunity to reach out to him and help him on his Quest. Her presence, in a series of late night phone calls, drives him on.
This novel is about loss. It is primarily about the loss of the self, whether to madness or the cure for madness, to alcohol and obesity, or to grief and isolation. The overwhelming loss borne by so many ordinary decent folk is so thick at the beginning of the novel, it is almost impossible to wade through the opening chapters. It is only as Smithy finds his rhythm on the old Raleigh and starts to rebuild his relationship with Norma, and with himself, that Queenie could lift her head off the gutter and look at the stars. But that’s how loss is, a seemingly unending struggle with a new routine until finally it becomes manageable, then imperceptibly, something to rely on again.
And so we pick ourselves up and move ourselves along. Slowly at first, then gathering pace.
A very elegant and rhythmic account of how people can slowly unfold themselves, no matter how crushed, given a chance.
Ron McLarty is a well known character actor on American television and it shows in the many well drawn cameos in the book. Like so many novels these days, it is written with an eye to the screenplay. No crime in itself, and Queenie will spend many happy hours trying to cast this one in her head.
Sean Astin could rehabilitate himself in Queenie's eyes with the role of Smithy for a start (see review).
Mags – it’s winging its way to Birr as Queenie writes! Thanks!
EPIC is what we wanted
When Queenie was at the God is an Astronaut gig recently, the band had the usual anti-war visuals and one photo of George Bush with the title, The Face of Evil. It struck Queenie at the time that possibly a photo of Rupert Murdoch would be more appropriate.
EPIC 2014 is a spoof documentary, set in 2014, about the history of the media since 1989. It was created by two graduates of the Poynter Institute for Journalism in Florida. It suggests that the photo at the GIAA gig should be of certain ICT multi-millionaires.
Whatever the case, the opinion promoted by the documentary is that the news is going to become increasingly narrow, shallow, trivial and inaccurate, and increasingly produced by non-media institutions. This is pretty terrifying, and is made even more terrifying by the idea that it is in fact what we want.
Click on the title to watch this. Please watch it.
EPIC 2014 is a spoof documentary, set in 2014, about the history of the media since 1989. It was created by two graduates of the Poynter Institute for Journalism in Florida. It suggests that the photo at the GIAA gig should be of certain ICT multi-millionaires.
Whatever the case, the opinion promoted by the documentary is that the news is going to become increasingly narrow, shallow, trivial and inaccurate, and increasingly produced by non-media institutions. This is pretty terrifying, and is made even more terrifying by the idea that it is in fact what we want.
Click on the title to watch this. Please watch it.
Wolf Logic
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion
William Ralph Inge, Outspoken Essays, 1919
William Ralph Inge, Outspoken Essays, 1919
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
The Rev rock Vicar St.....and Kevin Courtney's only a bollix
Gone. Gone. Gone now. Gone now beyond. Gone beyond beyond.
Take the old saying: musicians make their best music in their twenties. Add Except for Mercury Rev who keep getting better and better.
Don't mind what Kevin Courtney said about you, guys.
Again, take the old saying: musicians make their best music in their twenties.
Remove the word musicians and replace with the words rock journalists.
Remove the word music and replace with judgements.
Add This is true, except for Kevin Courtney, who was always a tosser.
All sorted.
Truly, those who get free tickets sit on their hands.
Take the old saying: musicians make their best music in their twenties. Add Except for Mercury Rev who keep getting better and better.
Don't mind what Kevin Courtney said about you, guys.
Again, take the old saying: musicians make their best music in their twenties.
Remove the word musicians and replace with the words rock journalists.
Remove the word music and replace with judgements.
Add This is true, except for Kevin Courtney, who was always a tosser.
All sorted.
Truly, those who get free tickets sit on their hands.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)