How did we all get it so wrong about Wolfie? He just wants to be a good global civil servant.
Don't we all, with those expenses.
Friday, April 01, 2005
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.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Theatre Review: January 10, 1610: Heaven abolished
Review of Rough Magic's The Life of Galileo, by Bertoldt Brecht, currently playing at Project Arts Centre, Dublin.
The title of this post refers to the date when Galileo Galilei, physicist, mathematician and astronomer, spots the moons of Jupiter through his new telescope. Their presence, and his subsequent discovery that Venus waxes and wanes like the moon, proved to Galileo and his followers that Copernicus’ theories about the universe were right, and that the earth revolves around the sun.
Under Lynn Parker’s direction, Rough Magic’s cast play out the political impact of this discovery in Brecht’s series of dialogues between Galileo, the central force of the play, and the bodies revolving round him. The Church, businessmen, politicians, his students, his religious daughter, all present conflicting views and needs to Galileo, that he must balance alongside his hypotheses as delicately as the universe itself, if he is to survive with his discoveries intact.
On a round set, segmented like a compass, canny Venetian and Florentine businessmen appear disinterested in theology, hoping Galileo can go back to inventing looms and pumps and compasses that shunt progress along. The church princes who dabble in science beg him to keep schtum, concerned his discoveries will reduce humanity to despair. What point is there to suffering and toil if man is not the centre of the universe, one of them asks Galileo? What indeed! His students thirst for knowledge and truth, and see political compromise as a betrayal of science. His daughter hopes to draw him back to her Catholic faith. The revolutionary set, represented by a group of street performers, use Galileo’s egalitarianist tendencies and his ideas to promote liberty, equality, and fraternity amongst the peasants of the Campagna.
Galileo, a man addicted to knowledge, fine wine and good food, cannot play the political game at this level of intensity. His outspoken views force his good friend and fellow scientist, Pope Urban VII, to bow to the pressure, and his arrogance brings the Inquisition on his head. Galileo has ‘the instruments’ shown to him. There is no need to use them: fear of torture makes him recant his theories. His toppling reverberates across Europe, and other Catholic scientists begin to self-censor. The New Age falters: Galileo retires to secluded house arrest, where his work is supervised and locked away each night by smug, middle-ranking Church officials.
The play is intellectually relentless, the formal dialogues between Galileo and the other characters move the audience through an extensive examination of the role of science in society.
When finally, Galileo has his theories smuggled out of Catholic Italy to Protestant Holland where they will be welcomed, his victory is Pyrrhic. He had an opportunity to sacrifice himself to further the attainment of individual freedom, but his fear of ‘the instruments’ prevented him from taking that step. At the time, he rationalised his cowardice by claiming “Unhappy the country that has need of heroes”. After an extended period of reflection, he concludes that the only goal of science is the welfare of man, and in subjugating what he knows to be true to shore up the hierarchical power structures of Catholic society, he has failed. The Church itself finally acknowledged this by pardoning Galileo in 1992. I kid you not!
Shortly before his death, Arthur Miller asked: “How many times do we have to indulge the same idiocies for which we must later be ashamed?”
Brecht wrote The Life of Gallileo in Santa Monica, California in the ‘forties, while Oppenheimer and his colleagues busied themselves just a little ways up the road. Brecht himself was ‘shown the instruments’ by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, and recanted his own theories. He fled for Europe next day, where he ended his career under the watchful eye of the East German Stasi.
Brecht’s epic theatre asks the audience to engage with it on an intellectual level. There is no room for empathy with the characters. Sitting in Project Arts Centre last night, we smiled knowingly at references to seventeenth century idiocies, reminded of the current rise of Creationism, of those who are being ‘shown the instruments’ in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, of individuals such as Aung Sung Suu Kyi, locked away in seclusion by smug, middle-ranking officials.
Two things struck me as particularly interesting. The first was the role of business in the play. As far as the merchants and mill owners of Italy were concerned, Gallileo could do what he liked so long as his innovations made them money. A mill owner even offers to smuggle him into the Venetian Republic, away from the influence of the Inquisition, and it is only Galileo’s arrogance that loses him this opportunity to escape.
The second was the pertinence of the play to the great intellectual struggle underway in the USA at present. In a society created to provide freedom from religious persecution, public opinion is being increasingly influenced by groups and individuals whose religious intolerance is trying to suppress homosexuality and the works of Charles Darwin.
These two issues raised a question I hadn't thought of before.
To what extent does modern business have a role in this debate? Diversity management is the new buzzword in European business circles, but it has been kicking around American corporations a lot longer. Is it contributing to the debate? Or is it sitting on the fence like it did with Galileo?
The title of this post refers to the date when Galileo Galilei, physicist, mathematician and astronomer, spots the moons of Jupiter through his new telescope. Their presence, and his subsequent discovery that Venus waxes and wanes like the moon, proved to Galileo and his followers that Copernicus’ theories about the universe were right, and that the earth revolves around the sun.
Under Lynn Parker’s direction, Rough Magic’s cast play out the political impact of this discovery in Brecht’s series of dialogues between Galileo, the central force of the play, and the bodies revolving round him. The Church, businessmen, politicians, his students, his religious daughter, all present conflicting views and needs to Galileo, that he must balance alongside his hypotheses as delicately as the universe itself, if he is to survive with his discoveries intact.
On a round set, segmented like a compass, canny Venetian and Florentine businessmen appear disinterested in theology, hoping Galileo can go back to inventing looms and pumps and compasses that shunt progress along. The church princes who dabble in science beg him to keep schtum, concerned his discoveries will reduce humanity to despair. What point is there to suffering and toil if man is not the centre of the universe, one of them asks Galileo? What indeed! His students thirst for knowledge and truth, and see political compromise as a betrayal of science. His daughter hopes to draw him back to her Catholic faith. The revolutionary set, represented by a group of street performers, use Galileo’s egalitarianist tendencies and his ideas to promote liberty, equality, and fraternity amongst the peasants of the Campagna.
Galileo, a man addicted to knowledge, fine wine and good food, cannot play the political game at this level of intensity. His outspoken views force his good friend and fellow scientist, Pope Urban VII, to bow to the pressure, and his arrogance brings the Inquisition on his head. Galileo has ‘the instruments’ shown to him. There is no need to use them: fear of torture makes him recant his theories. His toppling reverberates across Europe, and other Catholic scientists begin to self-censor. The New Age falters: Galileo retires to secluded house arrest, where his work is supervised and locked away each night by smug, middle-ranking Church officials.
The play is intellectually relentless, the formal dialogues between Galileo and the other characters move the audience through an extensive examination of the role of science in society.
When finally, Galileo has his theories smuggled out of Catholic Italy to Protestant Holland where they will be welcomed, his victory is Pyrrhic. He had an opportunity to sacrifice himself to further the attainment of individual freedom, but his fear of ‘the instruments’ prevented him from taking that step. At the time, he rationalised his cowardice by claiming “Unhappy the country that has need of heroes”. After an extended period of reflection, he concludes that the only goal of science is the welfare of man, and in subjugating what he knows to be true to shore up the hierarchical power structures of Catholic society, he has failed. The Church itself finally acknowledged this by pardoning Galileo in 1992. I kid you not!
Shortly before his death, Arthur Miller asked: “How many times do we have to indulge the same idiocies for which we must later be ashamed?”
Brecht wrote The Life of Gallileo in Santa Monica, California in the ‘forties, while Oppenheimer and his colleagues busied themselves just a little ways up the road. Brecht himself was ‘shown the instruments’ by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, and recanted his own theories. He fled for Europe next day, where he ended his career under the watchful eye of the East German Stasi.
Brecht’s epic theatre asks the audience to engage with it on an intellectual level. There is no room for empathy with the characters. Sitting in Project Arts Centre last night, we smiled knowingly at references to seventeenth century idiocies, reminded of the current rise of Creationism, of those who are being ‘shown the instruments’ in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, of individuals such as Aung Sung Suu Kyi, locked away in seclusion by smug, middle-ranking officials.
Two things struck me as particularly interesting. The first was the role of business in the play. As far as the merchants and mill owners of Italy were concerned, Gallileo could do what he liked so long as his innovations made them money. A mill owner even offers to smuggle him into the Venetian Republic, away from the influence of the Inquisition, and it is only Galileo’s arrogance that loses him this opportunity to escape.
The second was the pertinence of the play to the great intellectual struggle underway in the USA at present. In a society created to provide freedom from religious persecution, public opinion is being increasingly influenced by groups and individuals whose religious intolerance is trying to suppress homosexuality and the works of Charles Darwin.
These two issues raised a question I hadn't thought of before.
To what extent does modern business have a role in this debate? Diversity management is the new buzzword in European business circles, but it has been kicking around American corporations a lot longer. Is it contributing to the debate? Or is it sitting on the fence like it did with Galileo?
NARRATOR 4: Queenie + Percy discuss heroism in the televisual age
After the mayhem that ended our last evening together, Queenie and I pretended to be mad with each other and ran avoidance for a few days. To tell you the truth, I was a bit embarrassed. I mean, I don’t even fancy Sean Bean, I prefer my men a bit suave, you know. But it’s not often he jumps out of a cupboard in your friend’s apartment. And as I was stoned to the eyeballs on Xanax and Shiraz at the time (nice buzz actually), I missed a crucial opportunity to impress and put meeting the hobbits on the Quest agenda (Not that I believe in Quests). However, Queenie rang today and said to get my hot ass round, Percy needed our undivided. I made it conditional on revising my storage vision for the man cupboard. Queenie called me a conniving manslut and said dinner was at seven sharp.
Unbeknowst to Queenie, Percy was actually quiet because he was happy. Finally, he felt his Quest was back on track. He was surreptitiously noting what he could of the location and strengths of different heroes he saw on television. So he could ride out and marshall them. Unfortunately, they all seemed to live in a terrible, pestilence-ridden wasteland land called America, the centre of which, according to Queenie, was full of ‘droid people who deserved everything that was coming to them, and should be avoided at all costs. And he would need her help to get there. Another problem he faced was how to slip his weaponry out of the man cupboard without Sean Bean reattaching himself to his riding boot.
But this evening, Queenie had confounded his progress by hiding the remote control. ‘Swounds, she was relentless. After dinner with her and Narrator, she took his hand and said in a gentle voice that she needed him to understand that television was not real. It was an instrument for controlling people, she said. Narrator snorted at this and said Queenie must be well under control, then, seeing as how she was permanently plonked in front of it. Percy wasn’t sure what Queenie meant; he felt television was some sort of modern minstrel. Queenie thought that was a good analogy. Like cds and Playstations and chick lit novels, it was a way people kept in touch with important things like love and heroes and Quests nowadays, she told him. But unlike other minstrels, it was very powerful.
The reason it was so powerful was because everyone had one, everyone in the world almost, and so they all heard the same stories. This meant that the people who owned the stories could say whatever they liked, and everyone would believe them. And those people decided what dragons were and what heroes were, and because everyone wanted to feel the same as everyone else, they all hated these dragons and tried to be heroes like on television.
What kind of dragons, Percy wondered. Dragons such as fear and loneliness, said Queenie, the shadow crossing her face again. And what kind of heroes, he asked, a little afraid now.
Narrator, who was knelt peering through the keyhole of the man cupboard, suddenly said he could answer that, and started rummaging furiously through Queenie’s cd collection. He was looking for a minstrel called Bonnie Tyler, who had a great song about heroes, he said. Queenie got very annoyed and said she didn’t buy that kind of crap. Narrator reminded her of something called a karaoke bar in Kusadasi, 1996. They were getting quite upset about the whole thing, so Percy suggested they put on the cd made by a minstrel called the Boss. He said this because Queenie liked him. Narrator looked disgustedly at Queenie and muttered something about taking the girl out of the bog. Queenie looked at Percy strangely. You’re a lot smarter than you let on, dude, she said.
Unbeknowst to Queenie, Percy was actually quiet because he was happy. Finally, he felt his Quest was back on track. He was surreptitiously noting what he could of the location and strengths of different heroes he saw on television. So he could ride out and marshall them. Unfortunately, they all seemed to live in a terrible, pestilence-ridden wasteland land called America, the centre of which, according to Queenie, was full of ‘droid people who deserved everything that was coming to them, and should be avoided at all costs. And he would need her help to get there. Another problem he faced was how to slip his weaponry out of the man cupboard without Sean Bean reattaching himself to his riding boot.
But this evening, Queenie had confounded his progress by hiding the remote control. ‘Swounds, she was relentless. After dinner with her and Narrator, she took his hand and said in a gentle voice that she needed him to understand that television was not real. It was an instrument for controlling people, she said. Narrator snorted at this and said Queenie must be well under control, then, seeing as how she was permanently plonked in front of it. Percy wasn’t sure what Queenie meant; he felt television was some sort of modern minstrel. Queenie thought that was a good analogy. Like cds and Playstations and chick lit novels, it was a way people kept in touch with important things like love and heroes and Quests nowadays, she told him. But unlike other minstrels, it was very powerful.
The reason it was so powerful was because everyone had one, everyone in the world almost, and so they all heard the same stories. This meant that the people who owned the stories could say whatever they liked, and everyone would believe them. And those people decided what dragons were and what heroes were, and because everyone wanted to feel the same as everyone else, they all hated these dragons and tried to be heroes like on television.
What kind of dragons, Percy wondered. Dragons such as fear and loneliness, said Queenie, the shadow crossing her face again. And what kind of heroes, he asked, a little afraid now.
Narrator, who was knelt peering through the keyhole of the man cupboard, suddenly said he could answer that, and started rummaging furiously through Queenie’s cd collection. He was looking for a minstrel called Bonnie Tyler, who had a great song about heroes, he said. Queenie got very annoyed and said she didn’t buy that kind of crap. Narrator reminded her of something called a karaoke bar in Kusadasi, 1996. They were getting quite upset about the whole thing, so Percy suggested they put on the cd made by a minstrel called the Boss. He said this because Queenie liked him. Narrator looked disgustedly at Queenie and muttered something about taking the girl out of the bog. Queenie looked at Percy strangely. You’re a lot smarter than you let on, dude, she said.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
NARRATOR 3: Our Heroes are feeling a little Trapped
Queenie + Percy may both have a Quest, but after last night this mage of mosaic, this shaman of shag pile, feels they may be a bad influence on each other. Queenie had surfed along quite nicely until now, cocooned in a beige, appliqué quilt of sarcasm and irony. She mostly ignored her Quest, indulging in red wine, dark Venezuelan rum and other less widely available stimulants to blunt its niggling. Percy’s appearance, and contention that a Quest is ‘a good thing’ has required a more intense application of these blunting mechanisms, which is not having a good impact on Queenie’s ability to function in the world of the ‘droid people. She is feeling a little trapped.
Percy is also feeling a little constrained by his circumstances. The man cupboard, although fitted with tasteful and ingenious (if I may say so myself) storage solutions for small spaces (the principal design challenge was accommodating his plumed helmet), is very cramped. Along with a sense of physical restriction, Percy is having trouble thinking ‘outside the box’. His inability to concentrate on an intellectual analysis of his Quest is compounded by his reduced endorphin and adrenaline levels, due to his not having slayed a dragon in ages.
Queenie is always telling Percy that their Quests are the same. He doesn’t quite understand what she means, but he thinks it is something to do with the small, determined ache in his heart that will not go away until he has held the Holy Grail in his gloved hands and its glorious light illuminates all the nooks and crannies of his being. Sometimes, when Queenie is sitting by herself on a wet Tuesday and there is nothing on TV, her face turns in on itself and he can see the shadow of that ache flit across her dark eyes and her mouth.
However, Percy worries that Queenie is not as true to her Quest as he is to his. Often in the wee hours, when Queenie has had too much to smoke, she puts forward the proposition that they are both wasting their lives on their respective Quests, and that maybe they should just ‘be one with the ‘droid people‘. She talks a lot of nonsense when she smokes, of course, but as far as Percy can make out, ‘droid people are those citizens who do not have a Quest of their own and who only think about money, but who expect others to fight dragons on their behalf and then complain about the methods used as an excuse to avoid payment for the dragon heads. They include most people, as far as he can make out, particularly the ones whose appearance on news shows on television make Queenie shout at the television.
Those citizens irritate Percy too, but he tries to be compassionate towards them, because not everyone is blessed with the joy of a Quest. Queenie thinks Percy is a twat for thinking like that. Compassion is a bit hit and miss with her. Something to do with a world that Queenie visits five days a week in which knights allow their hunting hounds to eat each other.
Nevertheless, despite their differences, they have muddled along quite well up till now. But Queenie is quite worried about Percy. He’s been very quiet lately, and doesn’t argue with the same ferocity when she suggests giving up his Quest. She is even thinking about slinging the other two out of the man cupboard to give him the solitude he wants. Besides, they are tormenting his gentle, poet’s soul.
Clive Owen keeps banging on and on about how an evil wizard of the ’droid people called Dan Brown has already completed his Quest, and Sean Bean is adamant that the Holy Grail is in fact a small golden ring that was destroyed in a volcanic eruption in a place called New Zealand about five years ago. He reckons that Percy and he should go on a new Quest together. Preferably one that involves lots of terrified maidens.
Queenie considered it seriously. But having read The Road Less Travelled a couple of years ago, to placate her mother, Queenie knows that it’s a double-edged sword, being alone with your thoughts. And besides, who wants a man cupboard populated solely by a depressed virgin?
Percy is also feeling a little constrained by his circumstances. The man cupboard, although fitted with tasteful and ingenious (if I may say so myself) storage solutions for small spaces (the principal design challenge was accommodating his plumed helmet), is very cramped. Along with a sense of physical restriction, Percy is having trouble thinking ‘outside the box’. His inability to concentrate on an intellectual analysis of his Quest is compounded by his reduced endorphin and adrenaline levels, due to his not having slayed a dragon in ages.
Queenie is always telling Percy that their Quests are the same. He doesn’t quite understand what she means, but he thinks it is something to do with the small, determined ache in his heart that will not go away until he has held the Holy Grail in his gloved hands and its glorious light illuminates all the nooks and crannies of his being. Sometimes, when Queenie is sitting by herself on a wet Tuesday and there is nothing on TV, her face turns in on itself and he can see the shadow of that ache flit across her dark eyes and her mouth.
However, Percy worries that Queenie is not as true to her Quest as he is to his. Often in the wee hours, when Queenie has had too much to smoke, she puts forward the proposition that they are both wasting their lives on their respective Quests, and that maybe they should just ‘be one with the ‘droid people‘. She talks a lot of nonsense when she smokes, of course, but as far as Percy can make out, ‘droid people are those citizens who do not have a Quest of their own and who only think about money, but who expect others to fight dragons on their behalf and then complain about the methods used as an excuse to avoid payment for the dragon heads. They include most people, as far as he can make out, particularly the ones whose appearance on news shows on television make Queenie shout at the television.
Those citizens irritate Percy too, but he tries to be compassionate towards them, because not everyone is blessed with the joy of a Quest. Queenie thinks Percy is a twat for thinking like that. Compassion is a bit hit and miss with her. Something to do with a world that Queenie visits five days a week in which knights allow their hunting hounds to eat each other.
Nevertheless, despite their differences, they have muddled along quite well up till now. But Queenie is quite worried about Percy. He’s been very quiet lately, and doesn’t argue with the same ferocity when she suggests giving up his Quest. She is even thinking about slinging the other two out of the man cupboard to give him the solitude he wants. Besides, they are tormenting his gentle, poet’s soul.
Clive Owen keeps banging on and on about how an evil wizard of the ’droid people called Dan Brown has already completed his Quest, and Sean Bean is adamant that the Holy Grail is in fact a small golden ring that was destroyed in a volcanic eruption in a place called New Zealand about five years ago. He reckons that Percy and he should go on a new Quest together. Preferably one that involves lots of terrified maidens.
Queenie considered it seriously. But having read The Road Less Travelled a couple of years ago, to placate her mother, Queenie knows that it’s a double-edged sword, being alone with your thoughts. And besides, who wants a man cupboard populated solely by a depressed virgin?
Queenie + Percy's Top 10 Heroes of all time - Number 9
Parvati (Hindu Goddess of Righteous Indignation, Consort of Lord Shiva)
Parvati was the daughter of the mountain king, Himalaya, and a woman who did not understand the meaning of "that man's not for you".
An evil tyrant called Taraka took over the world and only the son of Shiva could save it from destruction. Shiva, the Lord of the Universe, didn't want a kid, however. He had more important things on his mind - austerity, aloofness, meditation, solitary bliss, the usual bloke stuff.
Parvati decided to persuade Shiva to save the world, and get herself laid in the process. She took herself off up a mountain and began to meditate in the blazing sun. She built four great fires to increase the heat, and meditated furiously. Her skin cracked and blistered, her hair matted, her soft eyes burned, but still she meditated.
Eventually, a Brahmin youth happened along and asked her why she was torturing herself. "My desire is Shiva, the Highest Object", she answered. The Brahmin pointed out that Shiva was the god of destruction, that he hung out in graveyards and reeked of death, that he had dodgy antecedents. Parvati told him to bog off, that Shiva was 'beyond the mind of such as him'. "Shiva is my love", she said.
Whereupon the Brahmin youth turned into Shiva. And not a pair of beer goggles in sight.
Shiva and Parvati went on to begat the war god Kumara and reveal the Tantric texts. Both of which proved very useful to a lot of people.
Parvati makes our Top Ten for persistence. Queenie would like to know what Shiva was doing checking her out, if he was so busy being aloof and unavailable.
Parvati was the daughter of the mountain king, Himalaya, and a woman who did not understand the meaning of "that man's not for you".
An evil tyrant called Taraka took over the world and only the son of Shiva could save it from destruction. Shiva, the Lord of the Universe, didn't want a kid, however. He had more important things on his mind - austerity, aloofness, meditation, solitary bliss, the usual bloke stuff.
Parvati decided to persuade Shiva to save the world, and get herself laid in the process. She took herself off up a mountain and began to meditate in the blazing sun. She built four great fires to increase the heat, and meditated furiously. Her skin cracked and blistered, her hair matted, her soft eyes burned, but still she meditated.
Eventually, a Brahmin youth happened along and asked her why she was torturing herself. "My desire is Shiva, the Highest Object", she answered. The Brahmin pointed out that Shiva was the god of destruction, that he hung out in graveyards and reeked of death, that he had dodgy antecedents. Parvati told him to bog off, that Shiva was 'beyond the mind of such as him'. "Shiva is my love", she said.
Whereupon the Brahmin youth turned into Shiva. And not a pair of beer goggles in sight.
Shiva and Parvati went on to begat the war god Kumara and reveal the Tantric texts. Both of which proved very useful to a lot of people.
Parvati makes our Top Ten for persistence. Queenie would like to know what Shiva was doing checking her out, if he was so busy being aloof and unavailable.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Queenie + Percy’s Top Ten Heroes of all time – Number 10
Cuchulainn (the hound of Culann)
Hero of ancient Irish mythology. Great hurler. Formerly known as Setanta. Was named Cuchulainn after he killed Culann’s guard dog with a perfectly aimed sliotar down the neck. When he was four.
Not to be confused with that other great hurler, Setanta Ó hAilpÃn. People from Cork think this fella is a hero, but Queenie is not, so she doesn't reckon he could choke a wolfhound with a sliotar.
Cuchulainn grew up to be the greatest warrior in Ireland. As such, he was useful to powerful people, and so was manipulated by various, nefarious rulers, such as Conchubhair of Eamain Mhaca (Armagh) and Queen Maedb of Connaught. Ended up killing his best friend Ferdia in battle as a result of her deviousness. Auld bag.
And of course, we’re still killing each other over small, boggy patches of land that wouldn’t feed a warrior, never mind a host – Queenie.
Fought the entire forces of Connaught single-handedly, after Maedb put a spell on the rest of his comrades, and when finally overcome, tied himself to a pillar and fought on. When he died, nobody would go near him to check his pulse until a raven settled on his shoulder and drank his blood.
Had a vicious temper, known as a paroxysm, or distortion. In fact, Queenie reckons he’s a forebear of the Incredible Hulk:
“he became a fearsome and multiform and wondrous and hitherto unknown being. All over him, from his crown to the ground, his flesh and every limb and joint and point of articulation of him quivered…. His mouth was twisted awry till it met his ears. Flakes of fire streamed from it…. The sounding blows of the heart that pounded within him were as the howl of a ban-dog* doing his office, or of a lion in the act of charging bears.” – The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p 333
He makes it into Queenie + Percy’s top ten, but his bad temper loses him the top spot.
If anyone has any submissions to make on the top ten heroes of all time (well this week anyway), Queenie would be interested in receiving them. But she is not interested in building a consensus here because she has to do that for a living and that’s bad enough. So the final decision is hers. And Percy’s.
* Ban-dog means female dog btw, unless Campbell meant bán, which is white in Irish. Queenie is a pedant on top of everything else.
Hero of ancient Irish mythology. Great hurler. Formerly known as Setanta. Was named Cuchulainn after he killed Culann’s guard dog with a perfectly aimed sliotar down the neck. When he was four.
Not to be confused with that other great hurler, Setanta Ó hAilpÃn. People from Cork think this fella is a hero, but Queenie is not, so she doesn't reckon he could choke a wolfhound with a sliotar.
Cuchulainn grew up to be the greatest warrior in Ireland. As such, he was useful to powerful people, and so was manipulated by various, nefarious rulers, such as Conchubhair of Eamain Mhaca (Armagh) and Queen Maedb of Connaught. Ended up killing his best friend Ferdia in battle as a result of her deviousness. Auld bag.
And of course, we’re still killing each other over small, boggy patches of land that wouldn’t feed a warrior, never mind a host – Queenie.
Fought the entire forces of Connaught single-handedly, after Maedb put a spell on the rest of his comrades, and when finally overcome, tied himself to a pillar and fought on. When he died, nobody would go near him to check his pulse until a raven settled on his shoulder and drank his blood.
Had a vicious temper, known as a paroxysm, or distortion. In fact, Queenie reckons he’s a forebear of the Incredible Hulk:
“he became a fearsome and multiform and wondrous and hitherto unknown being. All over him, from his crown to the ground, his flesh and every limb and joint and point of articulation of him quivered…. His mouth was twisted awry till it met his ears. Flakes of fire streamed from it…. The sounding blows of the heart that pounded within him were as the howl of a ban-dog* doing his office, or of a lion in the act of charging bears.” – The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p 333
He makes it into Queenie + Percy’s top ten, but his bad temper loses him the top spot.
If anyone has any submissions to make on the top ten heroes of all time (well this week anyway), Queenie would be interested in receiving them. But she is not interested in building a consensus here because she has to do that for a living and that’s bad enough. So the final decision is hers. And Percy’s.
* Ban-dog means female dog btw, unless Campbell meant bán, which is white in Irish. Queenie is a pedant on top of everything else.
NARRATOR 2: Queenie + Percy discuss the challenges facing dragon slayers in the new economy
Queenie is going through an interior design phase and keeps inviting me round. Ostensibly, it is do a fixer upper on her shelving requirements (she has a lot of books and shoes), but no matter how ingenious, quirky, or downright bitchin’ my designs are, we generally defer any decision-making with a bottle of wine and a bit of what she calls intellectual dragon-slaying. I suspect she really just wants someone to listen to her, but she’s too proud to admit it.
Unfortunately, Percy gets quite confused when we do this. One night, we were shooting the breeze about the war in Iraq when he appeared dressed to the neck in rusty chain mail wielding what I can only describe as seven foot spiked lump hammer, screaming “Where is it, Where is it?” I got quite agitated and there was a bit of confusion while Queenie found my Xanax, confiscated the lump hammer and persuaded Percy an attack was NOT imminent, and to put his pyjamas back on. Then she decided we should sort out Percy’s dragon confusion. Personally, I find rationalising with a man attired in pink girl’s pyjamas and a large, red-plumed helmet a bit unnerving (I don’t care what Wallpaper* says, pink and red never work together), so I sat back and let the Xanax warm me up and left it to Queenie.
Percy had accepted Queenie’s offer of shelter and assistance in his Quest very gratefully. As a knight and a hero he was obliged to return the favour. Besides, he liked Queenie and Narrator had told him that she was under siege from many dragons. However, he was having a lot of difficulty understanding when they attacked and how to slay them.
He explained to Queenie that previously, for centuries actually, when he came across a terrified maiden bound to a tree, he dismounted from his trusty steed and offered his services. Usually, the frightened villagers would point to the trail of destruction left by the marauding creature and show him a spot to lay in wait. Then when the dragon appeared Percy would slay him. Sometimes it took all day and he was quite tired afterwards. But exhilarated. Usually, the maiden offered him all kinds of inducements to stay on in the village and protect her, but Percy always felt pulled onwards by a deep urge to pick up the trail of his Quest.
Queenie said that might work with some chicks, but she was NOT a terrified maiden, and besides, she didn’t believe in the use of force, no, not even to slay dragons. Besides, she remarked, in that supercilious tone she used when she suspected Percy was trying to protect her, that one on one combat with dragons was not possible nowadays because they sit in their caves and rampage from afar with sophisticated technological devices.
She was adamant that Percy could not go and beard them in their caves because, she said, nobody is sure where they are, or indeed what dragons look like anymore. All we know of them is what they want us to believe, she added. It’s all about the brand nowadays, dude, she said, ‘old economy’ tactics won’t work on these guys.
Percy disagreed. When she was at work he watched television and saw many examples of ‘old economy’ dragon slaying, even though the battles were a little different to what he was used to. He had even seen one where the heroes looked like him, although generally, they were horse-mounted heroes called cowboys, or paint-streaked giants called Special Ops commanders, or rugged men called cops. But he argued that they were all on a Quest, and that despite their differences in battle tactics, they were all excellent dragon slayers.
Queenie started getting impatient with Percy then and tried to explain that there are many, many dragons in the world now, of all types with all kinds of agendas, and they are working together, which makes them almost unbeatable. Percy felt a surge of usefulness then. If what Queenie said was true, he argued, if the dragons were gathering strength again, maybe he should ride out and try to marshall a fellowship of heroes.
Queenie looked at him sadly, and was just about to speak when suddenly, Sean Bean jumped out of the man cupboard, where he had been sat listening with his pointy elbows* on his knees. To Percy’s consternation, he knelt at his feet and breathlessly mumbled an oath of allegiance to ‘my brother, my captain, my king’. Percy tried to wrestle him to his feet, but Sean Bean clung to him, sobbing. Narrator fainted. Clive Owen sniggered and continued playing Cotillion. Queenie swore at them all and went to bed.
* A badger told me this, so it must be true.
Unfortunately, Percy gets quite confused when we do this. One night, we were shooting the breeze about the war in Iraq when he appeared dressed to the neck in rusty chain mail wielding what I can only describe as seven foot spiked lump hammer, screaming “Where is it, Where is it?” I got quite agitated and there was a bit of confusion while Queenie found my Xanax, confiscated the lump hammer and persuaded Percy an attack was NOT imminent, and to put his pyjamas back on. Then she decided we should sort out Percy’s dragon confusion. Personally, I find rationalising with a man attired in pink girl’s pyjamas and a large, red-plumed helmet a bit unnerving (I don’t care what Wallpaper* says, pink and red never work together), so I sat back and let the Xanax warm me up and left it to Queenie.
Percy had accepted Queenie’s offer of shelter and assistance in his Quest very gratefully. As a knight and a hero he was obliged to return the favour. Besides, he liked Queenie and Narrator had told him that she was under siege from many dragons. However, he was having a lot of difficulty understanding when they attacked and how to slay them.
He explained to Queenie that previously, for centuries actually, when he came across a terrified maiden bound to a tree, he dismounted from his trusty steed and offered his services. Usually, the frightened villagers would point to the trail of destruction left by the marauding creature and show him a spot to lay in wait. Then when the dragon appeared Percy would slay him. Sometimes it took all day and he was quite tired afterwards. But exhilarated. Usually, the maiden offered him all kinds of inducements to stay on in the village and protect her, but Percy always felt pulled onwards by a deep urge to pick up the trail of his Quest.
Queenie said that might work with some chicks, but she was NOT a terrified maiden, and besides, she didn’t believe in the use of force, no, not even to slay dragons. Besides, she remarked, in that supercilious tone she used when she suspected Percy was trying to protect her, that one on one combat with dragons was not possible nowadays because they sit in their caves and rampage from afar with sophisticated technological devices.
She was adamant that Percy could not go and beard them in their caves because, she said, nobody is sure where they are, or indeed what dragons look like anymore. All we know of them is what they want us to believe, she added. It’s all about the brand nowadays, dude, she said, ‘old economy’ tactics won’t work on these guys.
Percy disagreed. When she was at work he watched television and saw many examples of ‘old economy’ dragon slaying, even though the battles were a little different to what he was used to. He had even seen one where the heroes looked like him, although generally, they were horse-mounted heroes called cowboys, or paint-streaked giants called Special Ops commanders, or rugged men called cops. But he argued that they were all on a Quest, and that despite their differences in battle tactics, they were all excellent dragon slayers.
Queenie started getting impatient with Percy then and tried to explain that there are many, many dragons in the world now, of all types with all kinds of agendas, and they are working together, which makes them almost unbeatable. Percy felt a surge of usefulness then. If what Queenie said was true, he argued, if the dragons were gathering strength again, maybe he should ride out and try to marshall a fellowship of heroes.
Queenie looked at him sadly, and was just about to speak when suddenly, Sean Bean jumped out of the man cupboard, where he had been sat listening with his pointy elbows* on his knees. To Percy’s consternation, he knelt at his feet and breathlessly mumbled an oath of allegiance to ‘my brother, my captain, my king’. Percy tried to wrestle him to his feet, but Sean Bean clung to him, sobbing. Narrator fainted. Clive Owen sniggered and continued playing Cotillion. Queenie swore at them all and went to bed.
* A badger told me this, so it must be true.
Gerry Adams was never a member of the IRA army council. And Queenie is Liv Tyler.
Liv Tyler is tall and slim with long dark hair. So is Queenie. Liv Tyler cannot tell left from right and finds driving intermittently challenging. So does Queenie. Liv Tyler knows a lot about hobbits. So does Queenie. Liv Tyler sleeps with rock stars (well one in particular). So does Queenie, when she gets the opportunity (although she doesn’t narrow her options so much, not having bagged one yet).
However, Queenie is not Liv Tyler. She knows this, because she does not have incredibly beautiful eyes and translucent skin, nor does she have a lifestyle that involves getting paid to go and live in New Zealand, or free dresses to wear to the Oscars.
Queenie is quite upset about all the kerfuffle around the nasty IRA and their lying and thieving and hoodwinking of just about everyone over the last few years. She is more than a little miffed at the thought that all the overtime she put in during the nineties, when she helped out on the fringes of the peace process, might be about to be flushed down the toilet. She is pissed off that, having grown up in a country where it was possible to watch people being murdered live on television, her views are not considered important. She is particularly upset that seventy people saw Robert McCartney have his throat ripped open in a Belfast bar last week but they’re saying nothing because they’re too scared (she doesn’t believe that for a second, pack of fence sitters).
But mostly she is upset, because Martin McGuinness, who she knows to be a very clever man, seems to be under the illusion that he is NOT currently a member of the IRA Army Council. She was having her breakfast on Sunday morning when she heard him, quite clearly say that he was not, on live radio. And then he said that Gerry Adams NEVER was, and Queenie nearly choked on her toast.
Queenie is like everyone else riding the Celtic Tiger. She would like the peace process, and its dreary steeples, and its brown suited men, and its suave apologists, and its oppressive righteousness to go away. But it never does. And now she has to think about it again.
She thought about it this morning when she saw a photo of Gerry Adams addressing a gathering of his supporters at a memorial for three IRA operatives who were assassinated by British troops (Queenie is being diplomatic in the use of her language here, knowing that some people felt the Troubles was a war). These people were wearing green military clothes and berets. Like the F.C.A., or the Territorials. Only cooler of course, because Gerry Adams, architect of the peace process was there.
Now Queenie is prepared to consider the possibility that her government is lying to her, that’s what governments do after all (isn’t it?), but she thinks that if she went to a memorial to commemorate her dead comrades, she would expect their leader to address the gathering.
Queenie also thinks that traditionally, Irish revolutionary movements that did not have a joint military/ political leadership usually ended up having a split when the political route was chosen. And that never happened in 1997. Not really.
But mostly, she wonders why these mysterious men (or maybe women) who make up the IRA Army Council have never made themselves known. They must be very unassuming. They fought the British army to a standstill, after all. They must be very proud of what they did. They must have wanted to win seats in the Houses of Parliament. To beard the hated enemy in its den. To use his phones and photocopiers and expense accounts to build a brave new world. Queenie wouldn’t have been able to resist. She wouldn’t have been able to contain herself enough to let some unblooded mouthpiece take her place for the next stage in the process. No sirree, she wouldn’t.
But maybe Queenie has it all wrong. She isn’t Liv Tyler after all, despite the superficial similarity and the driving dyslexia and the penchant for rock stars and the diploma in hobbit lore.
Just because Gerry Adams calls himself the leader of the republican family, and addresses military gatherings, and calls all the political shots north and south of the border, and speaks authoritatively on all aspects of the peace process, and struts around like he owns her goddamn country, doesn’t mean he’s a member of the IRA Army Council.
Whatever it is, and Queenie has her suspicions, up until now, she was prepared to let all this slide, because she thought that the Army Council members didn’t name themselves to prevent their enemies using it against them politically. After all, it’s a dirty game. But whatever about stealing money from a bank, or smuggling petrol across the Border, or running parts of Belfast like a personal fiefdom, ripping some bloke’s throat out in a pub because he dissed your capo is not on. So Queenie is not going to let it slide anymore. And neither is anyone else.
And so the appalling vista reopens itself, just in time for the next round of elections. Legions of martyrs and not a hero in sight!
However, Queenie is not Liv Tyler. She knows this, because she does not have incredibly beautiful eyes and translucent skin, nor does she have a lifestyle that involves getting paid to go and live in New Zealand, or free dresses to wear to the Oscars.
Queenie is quite upset about all the kerfuffle around the nasty IRA and their lying and thieving and hoodwinking of just about everyone over the last few years. She is more than a little miffed at the thought that all the overtime she put in during the nineties, when she helped out on the fringes of the peace process, might be about to be flushed down the toilet. She is pissed off that, having grown up in a country where it was possible to watch people being murdered live on television, her views are not considered important. She is particularly upset that seventy people saw Robert McCartney have his throat ripped open in a Belfast bar last week but they’re saying nothing because they’re too scared (she doesn’t believe that for a second, pack of fence sitters).
But mostly she is upset, because Martin McGuinness, who she knows to be a very clever man, seems to be under the illusion that he is NOT currently a member of the IRA Army Council. She was having her breakfast on Sunday morning when she heard him, quite clearly say that he was not, on live radio. And then he said that Gerry Adams NEVER was, and Queenie nearly choked on her toast.
Queenie is like everyone else riding the Celtic Tiger. She would like the peace process, and its dreary steeples, and its brown suited men, and its suave apologists, and its oppressive righteousness to go away. But it never does. And now she has to think about it again.
She thought about it this morning when she saw a photo of Gerry Adams addressing a gathering of his supporters at a memorial for three IRA operatives who were assassinated by British troops (Queenie is being diplomatic in the use of her language here, knowing that some people felt the Troubles was a war). These people were wearing green military clothes and berets. Like the F.C.A., or the Territorials. Only cooler of course, because Gerry Adams, architect of the peace process was there.
Now Queenie is prepared to consider the possibility that her government is lying to her, that’s what governments do after all (isn’t it?), but she thinks that if she went to a memorial to commemorate her dead comrades, she would expect their leader to address the gathering.
Queenie also thinks that traditionally, Irish revolutionary movements that did not have a joint military/ political leadership usually ended up having a split when the political route was chosen. And that never happened in 1997. Not really.
But mostly, she wonders why these mysterious men (or maybe women) who make up the IRA Army Council have never made themselves known. They must be very unassuming. They fought the British army to a standstill, after all. They must be very proud of what they did. They must have wanted to win seats in the Houses of Parliament. To beard the hated enemy in its den. To use his phones and photocopiers and expense accounts to build a brave new world. Queenie wouldn’t have been able to resist. She wouldn’t have been able to contain herself enough to let some unblooded mouthpiece take her place for the next stage in the process. No sirree, she wouldn’t.
But maybe Queenie has it all wrong. She isn’t Liv Tyler after all, despite the superficial similarity and the driving dyslexia and the penchant for rock stars and the diploma in hobbit lore.
Just because Gerry Adams calls himself the leader of the republican family, and addresses military gatherings, and calls all the political shots north and south of the border, and speaks authoritatively on all aspects of the peace process, and struts around like he owns her goddamn country, doesn’t mean he’s a member of the IRA Army Council.
Whatever it is, and Queenie has her suspicions, up until now, she was prepared to let all this slide, because she thought that the Army Council members didn’t name themselves to prevent their enemies using it against them politically. After all, it’s a dirty game. But whatever about stealing money from a bank, or smuggling petrol across the Border, or running parts of Belfast like a personal fiefdom, ripping some bloke’s throat out in a pub because he dissed your capo is not on. So Queenie is not going to let it slide anymore. And neither is anyone else.
And so the appalling vista reopens itself, just in time for the next round of elections. Legions of martyrs and not a hero in sight!
Monday, February 21, 2005
Norway's Black Metal Scene - the inside story
This story from yesterday's Observer Music Monthly magazine is hilarious.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1415240,00.html
And proof that:
a) Norwegians are mostly bonkers (with apologies to my 'relatively' sane Norwegian friends) and should have their highly lucrative oil and whaling industries removed from them forthwith (and given to a sensible, productive, hard-working race like the Irish);
b) Anyone who thinks that knowing about/ keeping alive the flame of Norse mythology is a GOOD thing is wrong.
Are you listening, Percy? - Queenie
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1415240,00.html
And proof that:
a) Norwegians are mostly bonkers (with apologies to my 'relatively' sane Norwegian friends) and should have their highly lucrative oil and whaling industries removed from them forthwith (and given to a sensible, productive, hard-working race like the Irish);
b) Anyone who thinks that knowing about/ keeping alive the flame of Norse mythology is a GOOD thing is wrong.
Are you listening, Percy? - Queenie
Monday's Question
If you destroy eighty thousand pounds STERLING by burning it in your sitting room fireplace, does that count as an act of decommissioning?
Dublin International Film Festival
Queenie would like to congratulate the D.I.F.F. on a very good festival this year. A good time was had by her, even though she never did get the timing right and always ended up a little too close to the screen, generally beside the elderly person who ate his sandwiches out of a loud greaseproof paper bag during the film. Bless them. Queenie will be old one day so she tries to be compassionate. But sometimes it's hard.
Best flick for her had to be Mysterious Skin, by Gregg Araki. It was great to see Elizabeth Shue in a good film again and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is really good as her gay hustler son. The film, which is about the impact of paedophilia on the lives of two young boys, dealt very sensitively with a difficult topic. Queenie didn't do so well, when the elderly man next to her started to cry during a very intense moment in the film. Should she have patted him on the arm or something? She doesn't know.
Other great movies she saw were Garden State , written, starring and directed by Zack Braff. Nathalie Portman is a FINE actress. She carries the film, which is funny but a bit slight. But it is worth seeing (why do people go to see ninety minutes of film and then whinge about how it doesn't plumb the depths of every bit of the story. I repeat 90 minutes). Peter Sarsgaard is just FINE. Queenie is seriously thinking of slinging Clive Owen out of the mancupboard to make room for him. Also the soundtrack is worth checking out.
Queenie also went to see The King's Game, a Danish political thriller. At first, she thought that was a bit of an oxymoron, quiet little Denmark and all that, but then she remembered that the greatest political thriller of all time is set in Denmark.
King's Game is the adaptation of a novel written by a Danish spin doctor who based it on his experience of an internal struggle for power in his party. Queenie thinks she might have met this spin doctor during her years as a spinette. She certainly remembers that internal power struggle as being particularly nasty and the fall out - the coming to power of the right, an increasingly isolationist and racist Denmark - is still with us. Queenie has to have a think about European politics one of the days - maybe tonight after the Theo VanGogh documentary. I'm sure you're all creaming yourself at the thought of the nuggets of wisdom that will unearth.
Finally, Queenie recommends The Republic of Love, based on Carol Shield's novel (another great writer who died recently), directed by Deepa Mehta. Very funny take on singledom, frustration, desperation, love, fucking it up, pulling it off, and a really funny sex scene that showed a woman reaching orgasm from having her toe sucked.
Queenie would be so lucky.
Work commitments prevented Melinda and Melinda and Private from being viewed, even with tickets bought. Grrrrrrrrrr.
Best flick for her had to be Mysterious Skin, by Gregg Araki. It was great to see Elizabeth Shue in a good film again and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is really good as her gay hustler son. The film, which is about the impact of paedophilia on the lives of two young boys, dealt very sensitively with a difficult topic. Queenie didn't do so well, when the elderly man next to her started to cry during a very intense moment in the film. Should she have patted him on the arm or something? She doesn't know.
Other great movies she saw were Garden State , written, starring and directed by Zack Braff. Nathalie Portman is a FINE actress. She carries the film, which is funny but a bit slight. But it is worth seeing (why do people go to see ninety minutes of film and then whinge about how it doesn't plumb the depths of every bit of the story. I repeat 90 minutes). Peter Sarsgaard is just FINE. Queenie is seriously thinking of slinging Clive Owen out of the mancupboard to make room for him. Also the soundtrack is worth checking out.
Queenie also went to see The King's Game, a Danish political thriller. At first, she thought that was a bit of an oxymoron, quiet little Denmark and all that, but then she remembered that the greatest political thriller of all time is set in Denmark.
King's Game is the adaptation of a novel written by a Danish spin doctor who based it on his experience of an internal struggle for power in his party. Queenie thinks she might have met this spin doctor during her years as a spinette. She certainly remembers that internal power struggle as being particularly nasty and the fall out - the coming to power of the right, an increasingly isolationist and racist Denmark - is still with us. Queenie has to have a think about European politics one of the days - maybe tonight after the Theo VanGogh documentary. I'm sure you're all creaming yourself at the thought of the nuggets of wisdom that will unearth.
Finally, Queenie recommends The Republic of Love, based on Carol Shield's novel (another great writer who died recently), directed by Deepa Mehta. Very funny take on singledom, frustration, desperation, love, fucking it up, pulling it off, and a really funny sex scene that showed a woman reaching orgasm from having her toe sucked.
Queenie would be so lucky.
Work commitments prevented Melinda and Melinda and Private from being viewed, even with tickets bought. Grrrrrrrrrr.
Hunter S Thompson is dead
We hope that he didn't kill himself. And if he did, we hope that it was really what he wanted.
http://www.gonzo.org/
What a sad week for literature
http://www.gonzo.org/
What a sad week for literature
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Narrator 1: Why Percy lives in Queenie’s Man Cupboard
Context is the wallpaper of life and I am Queenie + Percy’s interior decorator. Before I line it up for you, let me just say that I have no interest in Quests of any kind unless they are a brand of soft furnishings featured in Wallpaper*.
Percy is a scholar-warrior-poet prince, who has fallen on hard times. He likes solitude, so he can concentrate on his Quest, which is to find the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, needs must, and due to his reduced circumstances, he is dependent on Queenie’s hospitality. As Queenie lives in a small apartment, she doesn’t have a whole pile of room, so Percy has to live in Queenie’s man cupboard.
As man cupboards go it is not too bad, as Queenie is quite fussy, but he has to share it with a rough lout from the Wold called Sean Bean, who keeps attacking him with his broadsword and singing songs about a glorious era in which a knight called Sheffield Utd. slew mighty dragons called Hotspur, which Percy didn’t think was a dragon name, and a charlatan called Clive Owen, who treats him very cruelly by telling him that he is in fact King Arthur and by claiming that the fragrant Guinevere has taken up archery and painted herself blue. As if!
Queenie is quite taken with his Quest. She has an analytical mind. She talks quite a lot about thinking outside the box. Indeed the man cupboard is a box of sorts, but Percy is not sure if that’s what she is referring to. Queenie says that the first thing to do is to define what the Holy Grail is. She undertook a magic search of all the world called a Google and said there were 800,000 possible definitions. Percy is supposed to spend his days working through this list of clues, but he finds it a little daunting.
Instead, the lull in the Quest’s activities such as dragon-slaying and maiden-rescuing has allowed Percy to explore his creative side, which is also quite solitary. He writes poetry, he paints, he sneaks out with Queenie’s Canon A75 Powershot when she’s at work and fiddles with the buttons to make swirly patterns that are quite artistic. And hide the camera shake in his sword arm. And also, he’s not very good with the Google magic, which is why Queenie posts to the blog. The blog is where Queenie + Percy marshal their thoughts (ideas are great foot soldiers, Percy, and you need an army, dude, Queenie once said) and slay Queenie’s dragons.
In fact, although he doesn’t know it, Queenie is quite taken with Percy. True, his poetry is a little mawkish, and his photographs are a bit like himself (pretty but boring, she said once when they were arguing) and he rarely changes his clothes or washes his long blonde hair, but there is something about him that softens her face when she thinks of him. And of course, she is interested in his Quest, because she is on something of a Quest herself.
Percy is a scholar-warrior-poet prince, who has fallen on hard times. He likes solitude, so he can concentrate on his Quest, which is to find the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, needs must, and due to his reduced circumstances, he is dependent on Queenie’s hospitality. As Queenie lives in a small apartment, she doesn’t have a whole pile of room, so Percy has to live in Queenie’s man cupboard.
As man cupboards go it is not too bad, as Queenie is quite fussy, but he has to share it with a rough lout from the Wold called Sean Bean, who keeps attacking him with his broadsword and singing songs about a glorious era in which a knight called Sheffield Utd. slew mighty dragons called Hotspur, which Percy didn’t think was a dragon name, and a charlatan called Clive Owen, who treats him very cruelly by telling him that he is in fact King Arthur and by claiming that the fragrant Guinevere has taken up archery and painted herself blue. As if!
Queenie is quite taken with his Quest. She has an analytical mind. She talks quite a lot about thinking outside the box. Indeed the man cupboard is a box of sorts, but Percy is not sure if that’s what she is referring to. Queenie says that the first thing to do is to define what the Holy Grail is. She undertook a magic search of all the world called a Google and said there were 800,000 possible definitions. Percy is supposed to spend his days working through this list of clues, but he finds it a little daunting.
Instead, the lull in the Quest’s activities such as dragon-slaying and maiden-rescuing has allowed Percy to explore his creative side, which is also quite solitary. He writes poetry, he paints, he sneaks out with Queenie’s Canon A75 Powershot when she’s at work and fiddles with the buttons to make swirly patterns that are quite artistic. And hide the camera shake in his sword arm. And also, he’s not very good with the Google magic, which is why Queenie posts to the blog. The blog is where Queenie + Percy marshal their thoughts (ideas are great foot soldiers, Percy, and you need an army, dude, Queenie once said) and slay Queenie’s dragons.
In fact, although he doesn’t know it, Queenie is quite taken with Percy. True, his poetry is a little mawkish, and his photographs are a bit like himself (pretty but boring, she said once when they were arguing) and he rarely changes his clothes or washes his long blonde hair, but there is something about him that softens her face when she thinks of him. And of course, she is interested in his Quest, because she is on something of a Quest herself.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Monday's Question
Arthur Miller wrote an article about the importance of theatre as a tool for social and political commentary and bemoaned its decline in the US, shortly before his death. To remember him and his art, we reproduce a very pertinent question he posed in the text. He began by saying, 'the bad part about being around a long time is the realisation that mankind is endlessly reinventing the wheel; now the stoical military virtues - a kind of Roman obedience and conformity - echo in an attorney general'
Question: How many times do we have to indulge the same idiocies for which we must later be ashamed?
Question: How many times do we have to indulge the same idiocies for which we must later be ashamed?
Friday, February 11, 2005
Friday's Question
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?
Seriously, apparently Irish band Stockton's Wing got their name from a Bruce Springsteen song. Which one?
This has Queenie and Percy both stumped.
Seriously, apparently Irish band Stockton's Wing got their name from a Bruce Springsteen song. Which one?
This has Queenie and Percy both stumped.
Thursday's Question
Sorry this is a bit late. Queenie had a meeting overrun of seven hours yesterday.
Why are the papers coming down with articles condeming Angelina Jolie for being a marriage wrecker, and not coming down with articles condemning Brad Pitt for being a git for leaving Jennifer Aniston because she wasn't ready to have a baby?
Why are the papers coming down with articles condeming Angelina Jolie for being a marriage wrecker, and not coming down with articles condemning Brad Pitt for being a git for leaving Jennifer Aniston because she wasn't ready to have a baby?
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Poor Old Bewildered Ireland? I think not!
Lizette Alvarez published an article in the New York Times on 2nd February entitled Suddenly Rich, Poor Old Ireland seems Bewildered, in which she outlines an apparent moral dilemma facing Irish people as we come to terms with our newfound prosperity. In addition, the reduced threat of a 'belt of the crozier', due to the embroiling of the Irish Catholic Church in a paedophile scandal, has apparently added to our confusion as our moral certainties are shaken on two fronts.
Alvarez puts forward the proposition that Irish people are suffering a crisis of identity, due to our newfound wealth and moral freedom.
She asks a number of questions, some of them pertinent to current debates we are engaged in around immigration and inequality, others less so. For example, she asks What does it mean to be Irish, given that so much of the national psyche is tied up in centuries of poverty?
How is that relevant, or specific, to Irishness? Have not most peoples, nations, or communities suffered the indignity of poverty at some time or another? It struck me that, with its emphasis on material possessions,it was a particularly American outlook on what informs a psyche. Surely a psyche is formed from more enduring influences. Our location on an island at the western edge of the European continent, for example. Our homogeneity (according to recent genetic research, over 80% of Irish male DNA comes from the same mutation). Or our landscape and climate. Surely these are the conditions that impact on our psyche and inform how we react to relatively transient issues such as poverty, oppression, rebellion, religious obedience, or emigration.
Personally, I think it is all moot. What is important now is how we use our newfound wealth as a tool to identify and inform our role in a global society. To misquote Joseph Campbell: The result is an unprecedented expansion of horizon, that could well serve in our age.
So, how's the view?
Alvarez quotes from a recent speech by Emily O'Reilly, a conservative, a former journalist and current Information Commissioner: Released from the handcuff of religious obedience, we are Dionysian in our revelry ... hence the staggering drink consumption, the childlike showing off of helicopters, four wheel drives and private cinemas, the fetishing of handbags and high heels.
My first reaction to this was that I move in very different social circles to Ms O'Reilly! But, seriously, surely this has more to do with the impact of consumerism, channelled through an increasingly corrupt media, on a newly wealthy population. Keeping up with the Jones' is a human habit that some of us indulge in because we are human and we can afford it. Not because the bishops have lost their vice-like on our necks.
The core of Alvarez' article seems to be the now boring (to those of us who remember the penurious, jobless, violence-ridden seventies and eighties) argument that Irish culture and character - its keen sense of community, its sharp humour in the face of hardship - will be steamrolled by the rollicking economy.
This view takes no consideration of the way in which the world is organised today. Our keen sense of community is still alive - the villages we live have modernised is all. I, along with the rest of the population (Ireland-based, or diaspora), am a member of many communities. Online, offline, local, global, where I live, where I'm from, built around my hobbies, my sporting allegiances, and my concerns. I play an active role in all of them.
Our sharp humour is still rampant, but nowadays it serves to illuminate our views on everything from Desperate Housewives (how did that show win a Golden Globe), to the bombing of Kabul, to record-breaking bank robberies in Belfast. And the hardship is still there - we are fully-fledged members of a polarised, war-torn, environmentally-damaged, disease-riddled planet, along with the rest of you.
We are a kind, compassionate, passionate, gregarious, inquisitive, unafraid people who put our hands in our wallets whenever we encounter the misfortune of others. My parent's generation built our economic miracle by going without to educate their children, by adroitly playing 'the great game' of the global labour market, and by developing a unique system of social dialogue that ensures everyone has a voice at the policy table.
Our voice is heard internationally too. Our NGOs are thought leaders in the developing world. We send our police and soldiers to Sierra Leone, to Bosnia, and to East Timor to fulfil our UN peace-keeping duties. We take an active part in building a social Europe. And our Government continues to repay its debt to the US by facilitating its military transports to the war in Iraq, even though it is against the wishes of many of its citizens.
But apart from all that, we know that life is for living, and that we are all different, and if your idea of a fun night out is to pop a bottle of vodka in your Prada handbag, slip on your Mahnolo Blahniks, fly your helicopter over to a friend's post-modern hacienda to watch ninety minutes of unadulterated, American cultural imperialist rubbish on his plasma screen, if that is what floats your unique, beautiful boat, then fair play to you. But you can expect a right slagging from the rest of us when you get back.
Alvarez puts forward the proposition that Irish people are suffering a crisis of identity, due to our newfound wealth and moral freedom.
She asks a number of questions, some of them pertinent to current debates we are engaged in around immigration and inequality, others less so. For example, she asks What does it mean to be Irish, given that so much of the national psyche is tied up in centuries of poverty?
How is that relevant, or specific, to Irishness? Have not most peoples, nations, or communities suffered the indignity of poverty at some time or another? It struck me that, with its emphasis on material possessions,it was a particularly American outlook on what informs a psyche. Surely a psyche is formed from more enduring influences. Our location on an island at the western edge of the European continent, for example. Our homogeneity (according to recent genetic research, over 80% of Irish male DNA comes from the same mutation). Or our landscape and climate. Surely these are the conditions that impact on our psyche and inform how we react to relatively transient issues such as poverty, oppression, rebellion, religious obedience, or emigration.
Personally, I think it is all moot. What is important now is how we use our newfound wealth as a tool to identify and inform our role in a global society. To misquote Joseph Campbell: The result is an unprecedented expansion of horizon, that could well serve in our age.
So, how's the view?
Alvarez quotes from a recent speech by Emily O'Reilly, a conservative, a former journalist and current Information Commissioner: Released from the handcuff of religious obedience, we are Dionysian in our revelry ... hence the staggering drink consumption, the childlike showing off of helicopters, four wheel drives and private cinemas, the fetishing of handbags and high heels.
My first reaction to this was that I move in very different social circles to Ms O'Reilly! But, seriously, surely this has more to do with the impact of consumerism, channelled through an increasingly corrupt media, on a newly wealthy population. Keeping up with the Jones' is a human habit that some of us indulge in because we are human and we can afford it. Not because the bishops have lost their vice-like on our necks.
The core of Alvarez' article seems to be the now boring (to those of us who remember the penurious, jobless, violence-ridden seventies and eighties) argument that Irish culture and character - its keen sense of community, its sharp humour in the face of hardship - will be steamrolled by the rollicking economy.
This view takes no consideration of the way in which the world is organised today. Our keen sense of community is still alive - the villages we live have modernised is all. I, along with the rest of the population (Ireland-based, or diaspora), am a member of many communities. Online, offline, local, global, where I live, where I'm from, built around my hobbies, my sporting allegiances, and my concerns. I play an active role in all of them.
Our sharp humour is still rampant, but nowadays it serves to illuminate our views on everything from Desperate Housewives (how did that show win a Golden Globe), to the bombing of Kabul, to record-breaking bank robberies in Belfast. And the hardship is still there - we are fully-fledged members of a polarised, war-torn, environmentally-damaged, disease-riddled planet, along with the rest of you.
We are a kind, compassionate, passionate, gregarious, inquisitive, unafraid people who put our hands in our wallets whenever we encounter the misfortune of others. My parent's generation built our economic miracle by going without to educate their children, by adroitly playing 'the great game' of the global labour market, and by developing a unique system of social dialogue that ensures everyone has a voice at the policy table.
Our voice is heard internationally too. Our NGOs are thought leaders in the developing world. We send our police and soldiers to Sierra Leone, to Bosnia, and to East Timor to fulfil our UN peace-keeping duties. We take an active part in building a social Europe. And our Government continues to repay its debt to the US by facilitating its military transports to the war in Iraq, even though it is against the wishes of many of its citizens.
But apart from all that, we know that life is for living, and that we are all different, and if your idea of a fun night out is to pop a bottle of vodka in your Prada handbag, slip on your Mahnolo Blahniks, fly your helicopter over to a friend's post-modern hacienda to watch ninety minutes of unadulterated, American cultural imperialist rubbish on his plasma screen, if that is what floats your unique, beautiful boat, then fair play to you. But you can expect a right slagging from the rest of us when you get back.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Wednesday's Question
Why does Google think it important for me to know that MSN mappoint says the quickest way to get from Haugesund, Norway to Trondheim, Norway is via Newcastle, England?
Waiting for the scent of regime change
Maureen Dowd, NYT, is spitting fire about the culture cops again, following a very tame Superbowl night (in comparison to last year's excitement with Janet and Justin).
In the article (2/6/05) Dowd worries about the increasing levels of self-censorship creeping into state-funded media. She should try living in Ireland!
I love sassy, dry-wit ironic Maureen. I'm not so fond of hysterical, outraged Maureen. In fact, I am getting a bit weary of the falsetto heights of the note the Liberal Media Elite (LME) keep hitting as they face the onslaught of hordes of victorious, red, Middle American heathen unsupported.
I mean, how scary can a legion of soccer moms be?
We have all seen bad times when our guys are dumped out of power and cut way out of the loop. But this is a time for listening to people to find out why this happened, not screaming at them for making it so. Those canny politicians who know this are hopefully half-way round what we call the 'chicken in a basket' circuit, engaged in this exercise. Maureen would do well to head off on her own little mission. After all, she is in the priviledged position of being able to 'be educated in public'. Unlike the rest of us, who have to do it in our own time.
The whole thing takes me back to a day in Dail Eireann in late 1994. After a series of Opposition by-election wins that undermined the government's hold on power, new TDs including Michael Ring, a rural, right-wing, populist operator from Mayo, arrived to take their seats. Michael, who ran a particularly effective vote-getting machine, was consequently accompanied by busloads of muck savages up for the day. They swarmed all over the Dail, and drank the bar dry, much to the distaste of his parliamentary colleagues, particularly his party colleagues.
Despite all that, I remember it as a glorious day. The FF-Labour coalition was in trouble and a faint new scent, a blend of regime change and pig slurry, wafted around us all. Pretty soon after that, the Rainbow Coalition took office. It would never have happened without Michael and the other by-election victors. Proving yet again that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I tell this story to put forward the proposition that the tide will turn, because that is what tides do. And it will turn on the unlikeliest event. As is always the case with the American fundamental/ religious right, they will not know when to shut up and consequently, they will ruin it for themselves.
Hopefully, their demise will be through the uncovering of a 'hookers for Jesus' scandal involving one of their most virulent spokespersons, or with media images of Limbaugh and Medved cottaging together. More likely, however, they will just take their attacks on public service broadcasting too far and incur the ire of the soccer moms. Whose views will be echoed by some muck savage populist, who just happens to have an effective, vote-getting machine ready and waiting.
And suddenly, the air will once again tingle with the faint scent of regime change and pig slurry.
As the Chinese proverb states:
If you sit by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float past you.
So maybe take the hysteria down a notch or two, Maureen. And listen.....
In the article (2/6/05) Dowd worries about the increasing levels of self-censorship creeping into state-funded media. She should try living in Ireland!
I love sassy, dry-wit ironic Maureen. I'm not so fond of hysterical, outraged Maureen. In fact, I am getting a bit weary of the falsetto heights of the note the Liberal Media Elite (LME) keep hitting as they face the onslaught of hordes of victorious, red, Middle American heathen unsupported.
I mean, how scary can a legion of soccer moms be?
We have all seen bad times when our guys are dumped out of power and cut way out of the loop. But this is a time for listening to people to find out why this happened, not screaming at them for making it so. Those canny politicians who know this are hopefully half-way round what we call the 'chicken in a basket' circuit, engaged in this exercise. Maureen would do well to head off on her own little mission. After all, she is in the priviledged position of being able to 'be educated in public'. Unlike the rest of us, who have to do it in our own time.
The whole thing takes me back to a day in Dail Eireann in late 1994. After a series of Opposition by-election wins that undermined the government's hold on power, new TDs including Michael Ring, a rural, right-wing, populist operator from Mayo, arrived to take their seats. Michael, who ran a particularly effective vote-getting machine, was consequently accompanied by busloads of muck savages up for the day. They swarmed all over the Dail, and drank the bar dry, much to the distaste of his parliamentary colleagues, particularly his party colleagues.
Despite all that, I remember it as a glorious day. The FF-Labour coalition was in trouble and a faint new scent, a blend of regime change and pig slurry, wafted around us all. Pretty soon after that, the Rainbow Coalition took office. It would never have happened without Michael and the other by-election victors. Proving yet again that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I tell this story to put forward the proposition that the tide will turn, because that is what tides do. And it will turn on the unlikeliest event. As is always the case with the American fundamental/ religious right, they will not know when to shut up and consequently, they will ruin it for themselves.
Hopefully, their demise will be through the uncovering of a 'hookers for Jesus' scandal involving one of their most virulent spokespersons, or with media images of Limbaugh and Medved cottaging together. More likely, however, they will just take their attacks on public service broadcasting too far and incur the ire of the soccer moms. Whose views will be echoed by some muck savage populist, who just happens to have an effective, vote-getting machine ready and waiting.
And suddenly, the air will once again tingle with the faint scent of regime change and pig slurry.
As the Chinese proverb states:
If you sit by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float past you.
So maybe take the hysteria down a notch or two, Maureen. And listen.....
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Tuesday's Question
Part the First
What are the things we waste trying not to waste our time?
Part the Second
Who was I listening to when I thought of this question?
What are the things we waste trying not to waste our time?
Part the Second
Who was I listening to when I thought of this question?
Monday, February 07, 2005
Fridtjof Nansen Rocks
The first great thing is to find yourself, and for that you need solitude and contemplation: at least sometimes. I tell you, deliverance will not come from the rushing, noisy centres of civilization. It will come from the lonely places.
Fridtjof Nansen
This bloke skied across Greenland when he was 27, as well as being the first UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He undertook various other acts of global altruism with the League of Nations, and went on a number of polar adventures throughout his life.
Nails boy..........
http://www.fni.no/christ.htm
Fridtjof Nansen
This bloke skied across Greenland when he was 27, as well as being the first UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He undertook various other acts of global altruism with the League of Nations, and went on a number of polar adventures throughout his life.
Nails boy..........
http://www.fni.no/christ.htm
Monday's Question
What is that disgusting stuff that accumulates in the bottom of the electric toothbrush charger? (c'mon, you know what I'm talking about)
Friday, February 04, 2005
Book Review: The Queen of the South, by Arturo Perez Reverte
Interesting take on the gangster novel by the acclaimed Spanish author. Teresa Mendoza is a dozy, young, Mexican, drugrunner's mot who gets caught up in a revenge killing spree and has to plead for her life with Don Epifanio Vargas, the local narco boss. He allows her to flee to Spain, where she takes up with a Spanish version of the same bloke and lightening strikes twice. (This is all on the back of the book btw - no spoilers intended).
A stint in prison sharing with the intriguing Patricia O'Farrell (the Marbella O'Farrell's, don't you know) sets up the path which Teresa will follow to her destiny .......
Although this was a good story, with a believeable anti-heroine and a reasonable pace, this is nowhere near as good as Reverte's The Fencing Master.
It's almost 450 pages long, in the big airport size, and there's far too many lovingly described scenes of Teresa sitting alone with a bottle of tequila and a spliff, thinking about the men she's loved and lost. Pinche!
The narrator technique used to move the story forward is a little contrived and the Patricia O'Farrell character is completely OTT.
Having said that, it's worth a read. After you've read The Fencing Master.
A stint in prison sharing with the intriguing Patricia O'Farrell (the Marbella O'Farrell's, don't you know) sets up the path which Teresa will follow to her destiny .......
Although this was a good story, with a believeable anti-heroine and a reasonable pace, this is nowhere near as good as Reverte's The Fencing Master.
It's almost 450 pages long, in the big airport size, and there's far too many lovingly described scenes of Teresa sitting alone with a bottle of tequila and a spliff, thinking about the men she's loved and lost. Pinche!
The narrator technique used to move the story forward is a little contrived and the Patricia O'Farrell character is completely OTT.
Having said that, it's worth a read. After you've read The Fencing Master.
Friday's Question
What kind of a muppet am I to be getting up at 6am to get into work to try for hours online to get tickets to see U2 in June?
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Change what you can
The new billboard ad for Nip/Tuck, which won a Golden Globe(why?) says Change what you can. Hide what you can't.
It struck us that this statement can be applied to many things - our personalities for example, or the way in which governments operate, or the way in which we deal with difference/ conflict in society, or indeed the way we handle relationships.
It makes us wonder whether the current fetish for cosmetic surgery isn't just another way in which Western society deals with its, IOHO, deeply suppressed guilt at the impact of its structures and values on its members and on everybody else.
I read somewhere that the average person has 50,000 'conversations' with themselves everyday, 80% of which are negative and many of which are about their physical attributes. - Queenie
Cosmetic surgery, digital enhancement of photographic images, low carb diets and our obsession with our appearances (all exemplified by the image of the actor on the billboard - a complete non-entity whose name I can't even remember) appears to fill the void left by our inability, or disinclination, to undertake the admittedly very difficult journey towards self-acceptance. Not only that, those who actively avoid that journey through surgery or other transformative means are often rewarded by society with increased status, fame and wealth.
And of course, the added benefit is that if self-acceptance is not a valid activity/ outcome, then we sure as hell don't need to undertake the even more difficult task of accepting other people's little idiosyncracies.
A curse on the dragon Perfection - Percy
It struck us that this statement can be applied to many things - our personalities for example, or the way in which governments operate, or the way in which we deal with difference/ conflict in society, or indeed the way we handle relationships.
It makes us wonder whether the current fetish for cosmetic surgery isn't just another way in which Western society deals with its, IOHO, deeply suppressed guilt at the impact of its structures and values on its members and on everybody else.
I read somewhere that the average person has 50,000 'conversations' with themselves everyday, 80% of which are negative and many of which are about their physical attributes. - Queenie
Cosmetic surgery, digital enhancement of photographic images, low carb diets and our obsession with our appearances (all exemplified by the image of the actor on the billboard - a complete non-entity whose name I can't even remember) appears to fill the void left by our inability, or disinclination, to undertake the admittedly very difficult journey towards self-acceptance. Not only that, those who actively avoid that journey through surgery or other transformative means are often rewarded by society with increased status, fame and wealth.
And of course, the added benefit is that if self-acceptance is not a valid activity/ outcome, then we sure as hell don't need to undertake the even more difficult task of accepting other people's little idiosyncracies.
A curse on the dragon Perfection - Percy
Thursday's Question
Why do Marks and Spencers charge less for four packaged kiwi-fruit, encased in layers of non-biodegradeable plastic, than they do for four loose kiwi fruit?
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Lady D'Olier wants our custom ... we think
The Irish Times is running an intriguing advertising campaign at the moment, based on a number of statements about where people's heads are at, including: We know what you do at night, We know you are dreaming of escape, and We know this is not how you imagined your life, or words to that effect - we haven't managed to memorise them.
The campaign appeared to us to be a bit Big Brotherish at first, but the images are arresting.
In one, the 'how you imagined your life' ad, a young, dark-haired woman seems to be washing dishes in a restaurant. She stands in profile to the camera, at the left hand edge of the picture. Her hair masks her face. She could be Asian, is she an immigrant? In addition, a man stands with his back to us in the right hand side of the photo. Who is he? Is he unhappy too, or is he causing the girl's unhappiness?
In the second, the 'what you get up to at night' ad, the photo is of what seems to be a suburban street in the evening. The street lights are the focus of the image. It is taken from a strange angle (and you are looking up at it on billboard, which adds to the confusion). It appears as if the viewer is standing at an upstairs window in a suburban home. Is it the view from Queenie's bedroom? If so, how does the Irish Times know what she gets up to?
The third, or 'escape' one has only flashed past us on a bus once, so we could be wrong, but from what we can remember, it is an interior and there may be a young man sitting on a sofa, couch-potato-like.
From our initial 'WHAT?!' reaction, we are becoming more intrigued with these images. One of Queenie's colleagues mentioned them to her at work today, so they are obviously having an impact on thirtysomethings.
What is the Irish Times trying to say? Are they picking up on a mood? Are we all in the same boat? Are they saying that they are very knowledgeable about all the different types of Irish experience there are? Are they trying to kick start a mood? Are they trying to brand dissatisfaction? Are they all-seeing, all-knowing?
For us, the images themselves are beautiful and reminded Queenie in particular very much of the work that Hopper did in 1950s USA. They have that same sense of loneliness and isolation that prowled around his takes on the modern urban landscape.
We would be interested in finding out what the brief was, in terms of target demographic, and what the campaign is trying to do. If anyone knows. Based on her interest in the campaign, we assume that Queenie is in some way included in the target audience. (Percy is in a different demographic that is targeted chiefly by broadsword salesmen and helpless maidens)
This leads on to the question of what the Irish Times are trying to do generally. If they are trying to brand themselves as understanding (and by extension reflecting) the aspirations of a particular demographic, which includes Queenie, how does that sit with their traditional image of representing both/ all sides of an article? How does that sit with them shelling out cash for the views and opinions of people like Mark Steyn, for example? (Queenie hates Mark Steyn - Percy)
Queenie: It's not that I have a problem with reading OpEds from those with diametrically opposing views, in his case a neo-con view of the world. It's just that international affairs to a great extent are now run by neo-cons, so we get their views on the News pages already. Therefore, I don't need it rammed home to me by their cheerleaders in the OpEd pages.
The campaign appeared to us to be a bit Big Brotherish at first, but the images are arresting.
In one, the 'how you imagined your life' ad, a young, dark-haired woman seems to be washing dishes in a restaurant. She stands in profile to the camera, at the left hand edge of the picture. Her hair masks her face. She could be Asian, is she an immigrant? In addition, a man stands with his back to us in the right hand side of the photo. Who is he? Is he unhappy too, or is he causing the girl's unhappiness?
In the second, the 'what you get up to at night' ad, the photo is of what seems to be a suburban street in the evening. The street lights are the focus of the image. It is taken from a strange angle (and you are looking up at it on billboard, which adds to the confusion). It appears as if the viewer is standing at an upstairs window in a suburban home. Is it the view from Queenie's bedroom? If so, how does the Irish Times know what she gets up to?
The third, or 'escape' one has only flashed past us on a bus once, so we could be wrong, but from what we can remember, it is an interior and there may be a young man sitting on a sofa, couch-potato-like.
From our initial 'WHAT?!' reaction, we are becoming more intrigued with these images. One of Queenie's colleagues mentioned them to her at work today, so they are obviously having an impact on thirtysomethings.
What is the Irish Times trying to say? Are they picking up on a mood? Are we all in the same boat? Are they saying that they are very knowledgeable about all the different types of Irish experience there are? Are they trying to kick start a mood? Are they trying to brand dissatisfaction? Are they all-seeing, all-knowing?
For us, the images themselves are beautiful and reminded Queenie in particular very much of the work that Hopper did in 1950s USA. They have that same sense of loneliness and isolation that prowled around his takes on the modern urban landscape.
We would be interested in finding out what the brief was, in terms of target demographic, and what the campaign is trying to do. If anyone knows. Based on her interest in the campaign, we assume that Queenie is in some way included in the target audience. (Percy is in a different demographic that is targeted chiefly by broadsword salesmen and helpless maidens)
This leads on to the question of what the Irish Times are trying to do generally. If they are trying to brand themselves as understanding (and by extension reflecting) the aspirations of a particular demographic, which includes Queenie, how does that sit with their traditional image of representing both/ all sides of an article? How does that sit with them shelling out cash for the views and opinions of people like Mark Steyn, for example? (Queenie hates Mark Steyn - Percy)
Queenie: It's not that I have a problem with reading OpEds from those with diametrically opposing views, in his case a neo-con view of the world. It's just that international affairs to a great extent are now run by neo-cons, so we get their views on the News pages already. Therefore, I don't need it rammed home to me by their cheerleaders in the OpEd pages.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
St. Brigid's Day
I was at a funeral yesterday and the priest gave a lovely sermon about cherishing diversity. He was talking about people from other faiths principally, but I couldn't help thinking what a total and utter hypocrite he was to be standing there telling me, using lovely joined-up sentences (it was a posh funeral), to cherish others, when I’m not allowed have his job.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02784b.htm
I'm talking about this because today is 1st February, the first day of spring and St. Brigid's Day here in Ireland. It is so because Brigid is actually the Christianised version of the Celtic goddess Brig/ Brigid/ Brigantia, Celtic Goddess of Fire, Blacksmiths, Wells, Springs and Poets. (Does that mean she's my goddess? - Percy)
As she was the main goddess of Ireland and Wales, Brigid's feast, or Imbolc, was an important one and therefore was celebrated in spring.
http://www.mayhemltd.com/tools-brigid.htm
As the old schoolyard joke goes, St. Brigid’s Cross - stay away from her today.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02784b.htm
I'm talking about this because today is 1st February, the first day of spring and St. Brigid's Day here in Ireland. It is so because Brigid is actually the Christianised version of the Celtic goddess Brig/ Brigid/ Brigantia, Celtic Goddess of Fire, Blacksmiths, Wells, Springs and Poets. (Does that mean she's my goddess? - Percy)
As she was the main goddess of Ireland and Wales, Brigid's feast, or Imbolc, was an important one and therefore was celebrated in spring.
http://www.mayhemltd.com/tools-brigid.htm
As the old schoolyard joke goes, St. Brigid’s Cross - stay away from her today.
Today's Question
If the Gordon's Gin bottle has an apostrophe, why doesn't the Baileys The Original Irish Cream bottle have one?
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