Arse End Of Ireland

If You Build It, They Will Short-Circuit.

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:07:00 +0000

A few people have said to me, from under makeshift shelters and large, iron shields, that they find the new blog, Coddle Pot, a little difficult to navigate.

Difficult to navigate? It's not the fucking Bermuda Triangle, people! But if the course of history has taught us nothing else, it's that change is bad, and I suppose we're right, if short-sighted, to be wary. So hold my ~~talons~~ hands, and I'll trot you through the whole thing. One final time. We need to accept that The Arse has been flattened ... all of us.

Coddle Pot is a group comedy blog, collective mirth, if you will. Basically it's all of the laughs with none of the back-breaking, forced consistency. The four writers involved are as differing in their comedic leanings as Batman is from Superman is from Wolverine is from The Hulk. I take the reins of a Monday, generally, with my usual splurging toss over how heavy a gram one can get for fifty quid these days and how Bertie Ahern needs defenestrating. Manuel T. Waiter serves up his coddle on a Tuesday, with those much-loved tales about the levels of utter cuntosity he gets in his workplace, looking for lobster mash and quail eggs on toast. Manuel Estimulo, everyone's favourite fascist, throws up his ... unique take on etiquette for modern living on a Wednesday. And 100% egg-free Flann dishes up on a Thursday, taking us through his celebrity lifestyle one bewildering horror at a time. Fridays is a bit of a free-for-all, but we're hoping to have something very special cooked up soon ... I'd say watch this space

Layout-wise, it's more magazine style than the puke-green linearity you've come to expect from Arse End Of Ireland; there are lots more (and complimentary) colours, for a start, and lots of lovely clickable stories gawping at you. Latest post at the top of the page, categories underneath ... nothing difficult about that! Click "Read More" to read more, that kind of thing, and comments are gently filed on each story's individual page. You don't need to log in or register, or even leave your credit card number, but thanks to everyone who did, all the same. It'sa gonna be a great Christmas thisa year! First comment or so you leave will be held for moderation, but after that, you're in the clear. Very like the Irish justice system, in fact.

We've also got a mini-site called Coddle Pot Community, which you'll see on the top bar next to our About/Contact/Links/Subscribe sections. It's in here you get our recommendations for other good blogs, music, film, and extra shite we've dirtied our online shoes in. Seeing as on the main blog we're far too focused for that kind of thing.

Yarp, that's about it! We've three months of tasty posts up for you to wallow in, and absolutely no ads for Russian brides or I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Viagra! And don't be afraid of my three co-writers. I know they're very male, and much scarier than I am, but you'll get used to them. Hmm? What's that? They're less scary? Well fuck you and the ass you sidled in on!

Lights! Camera! Lift Off! Hold on, that's not right at all.

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:15:00 +0000

Coddle Pot

It's where I hang out now. Yup. Departed from the Arse, headed full blast towards a nice, safe commune with like-minded demi-gods. You should pop in and all that. There's less neon green!

No comments here, so you can reach me at the ould email address or by emailing me through Coddle Pot, should you wish to partake in feedback and that kind of carry-on. Be gentle. We've still got that new commune smell - lentils, beancurd, armpits. You know what I'm talking about, County Mayo!

The new blog...

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:20:00 +0000

... will be announced as something raring to go and delightfully readable shortly. Honest. No, honest. Honest as David Norris' twinkly little eyes.

The new blog has a name and an address and everything. I'm just not telling you yet. Gots to Hoover the curtains and divvy up the blogroll and all that. Oh yeah, and figure out how to post.

The moral of the story is: Stay Chooned. I haven't forgotten my sworn duties to put the fragments of oddments that roll around the back of my head into eloquent text.

Help! Help! We're being repressed!

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Fri, 22 May 2009 07:13:00 +0000

Comments wound down, kids.

Y'know, if this new venture doesn't work, I'm going to look like a right gom. Either way, keep your nose twitchin' skywards for news. And if you need to contact me in the meantime, you know the email address. If you don't know the email address, you need to look right over there -----> for it. You gom.

Winding Down, Winding Down...

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:21:00 +0000

... as in, I should be. Shortly. And moving! Yes, to pastures more stylish and... more crowded. Ooh!

All going well, I should be covering up this Arse very soon and taking my alarming rants to a brand new platform and a brand new web address with some brand new buds. I was going to put up a few posts this week, but I'm saving my funnies for the launch of something bigger and better. Hopefully. I mean, fingers crossed. And all that.

So yeah, I'll be closing comments and shtuff soon. Stay tuned. And if, like Twink's beauty regime, it all goes hideously wrong, I'll just slink back in and we'll pretend none of this ever happened. Right?

I'm actually quite excited. I can tell because I've got chest pains and olfactory hallucinations.

I Still See His Little Face...

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:29:00 +0000

Yesterday, I shut the door in a Fine Gael candidate's face.

I didn't even give him a chance to launch the good ship Bullscutter. I balked and shook my head and said, "Oh, no. Fine Gael. Don't come near me." Dear Jesus, Kerry fucking Katona could have been more eloquent. There are so many things I could have said to express my deep mistrust for Fine Gael, and to explain why there's nothing he could have told me that would win him a vote. I don't vote right wing. I don't believe Fine Gael offer anything approximating legitimate alternative for this country. I disagree with the party standpoint on a lot of issues dear to me. All of this I could have explained, but I had coffee swiftly cooling and I hate being annoyed at home after a long, hard day breaking my arse at work fending off the slavering jaws of recession and impending doom. So instead I left him gaping, and looking not a little hurt, on the doorstep.

It goes against every white-hot fleck in my ranting mouth to be rude to people. Argumentative, yes; rude, no. I really do feel bad.

Inordinately bad. Fine Gael are people too, despite what my mammy says.

No, honest, chick-lit is easy. Show me the money.

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Sun, 17 May 2009 23:49:00 +0000

Ally has it all; the job at Grazia magazine where she writes about shoes and all that, the sexy and powerful boyfriend with blue eyes who wears suits every day, the chic apartment with underfloor heating and black granite worktops in the kitchen she's too damn slim and full of Frappucinos to use. But when stubbly artist who wears untucked t-shirts Alejandro walks into her life, she finds herself thinking that maybe her pristine existence was missing something: adventure. Within a month ~~she's shooting heroin while discussing death and Gasper Noe movies...~~

Ahem.

Sally works hard at being the perfect wife and mother. Sexy advertising exec husband Adrian is still as hot as a Stanley oven for her, and she's already had him feck three adorable and high-achieving buns in... er, said oven. But with her daughter's new teacher Marco giving her ears as well as eyes, and an impending visit by the mother-in-law from hell, can Sally keep it all together in time for the Calor Gas Housewife Of The Year? ~~Gin helps, but with Sally slowly sinking into sticking of her own piss, spread eagled on the kitchen floor while her teenage son's best mate...~~

Shite.

Callie, Jilly and Polly made a vow at seventeen that whoever was the most successful at thirty, according to criteria they determined while under the influence of teenage stupidity and soggy romantic ideals no one with a functioning fucking brain can stick to, would earn the incandescent jealousy of the other two, which after all is all wimmin want. Now Callie is a successful entrepreneur with the glamorous kind of anorexia, Jilly is PA to Seb Scott the edgy director, and Polly is married with kids and has run to fat and boredom. Polly is dreading the one-upmanship at their reunion holiday at Spa Chic in NYC, but sometimes, she finds, what you want is what you had all along. Incensed by her lack-of-shit-giving about their size zero frames and superstar lifestyles, Callie and Jilly create the ultimate nightmare to put Polly back in her box, the smug bitch. Poisoned, gangraped, disoriented, can Polly pull her life back together in time for her flight home...

Wow. Maybe my mam is right. There are some things I'm just not as good as Cecilia Ahern at.

... And Even More Politicked Off

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:53:00 +0000

I am sick shit of politicians. They've crawled from under rocks I didn't even know I had. Fucking upwardly-straining leech-like simperfucks. They weary me.

We got a phonecall at work the other day from a Cork City political candidate. Desperate to spin himself into something approximating state-paid gobshitery, he was enquiring on behalf of a could-be constituent as to when her service call, reported back in 2008, would be taken care of.

"Every time she asked your company to sort out the snags in her local authority house," he stated, "you let her down. Months and months have gone by, appointments missed, hair torn out, phonecalls unanswered... you have repeatedly gone back on your promises to her!"

"Are you referring to the snags she reported to us two weeks ago?" asked our customer service rep.

"It is TOO MUCH to put up with in this DAY AND AGE that local authority tenants should have to be treated like SECOND CLASS CIT... what?"

"Yes, two weeks ago," said the service rep. "I have the date here. As a matter of fact, the parts needed are due in to us today, and just as I told the tenant, repeatedly, as soon as I can confirm that the parts are in stock with us we'll be out to do her snag list."

"Oh. Well, can you check whether the parts have come in?"

"Not at this moment. But when they do, we will be on to that whinging, lying tenant to arrange a service call, not on to you, as you're not our client, and we don't know you from Adam, and we don't tend to give details on everyone else's jobs to random halfwits armed with elocution lessons and self-serving concern for the Little Man. Now fuck off, you offensively accomplished buffoon."

You know what pisses me off most about this smugly benevolent call-on-behalf-of-the-less-fortunate, though? The fact that because of a happy coincidence between the timing of the politician's call to us and the due date of the moaning, lying client's required parts, that bastard will now take the credit for pushing "Evil Company Inc" into hurrying up completion of a contract we were just about to complete anyway. And so he will get a vote out of it, and a bit of wheedling arse-licking to plump him up in the eyes of the arse-licker's buddies ... but isn't that how things work in Ireland? Minor favours done at politically advantageous intervals, alliances forged on a shared proficiency in the language of wink-wink-nudge-nudge? Go fuck off and do some real work, you blinkered gimps. Just. Fuck. Off.

*Please note that the politician I refer to hasn't been named not down to any respect on my part, but because I ain't putting my job on the line for his class of cunt any more than this rapid recession already has done.

REALLY Terrible Irishisms

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:19:00 +0000

With the details of the Department of Education's Summer Works Scheme published last week, the whole of the Irish construction industry has battered smoking holes into their earsets, keyboards and estimating departments trying to get a cut of the action. I should know. I've been smack(ed up) in the middle of it, desperately forging connections with the dusty secretaries of convent schools, clamouring for the chink of light from the edge of an architect's smile that might tell us we're in with a chance, if we play our free match tickets right.

Specifically, I've been contacting school principals.

Have you got a very Irish name? Many of us have either a very Irish first name or a very Irish last name, so in this instance I must insist that you have both. Aine McCarthy? Donal O'Shea? Sean Quigley? Sure nobody could imagine you as anything else but an uber-Paddy, right?

Well you wouldn't be Irish enough for an Irish principal.

No. Irish principals are the most Irish of the Irish Irish. Conor O'Sullivan? Irish principals spit in the faces of Conor O'Sullivans! You've gotta be Chonchubair O'Suilleabhain if you wanna cut it as a smug priomhoide with shamrocks flakin' out yer lugs. Orla Ryan? Go dtuga Dia ciall duit, Orla Ryan, or Orflaith Ni Riain as you better be known from here on in, you English-loving slattern! When it comes to Irishing up your ainms, you can't have enough randomly placed h's, aigh's and uair's to satisfy an Irish principal. If you confidently assert that your name cannot be Irishised, you ain't got enough Irish principals in your breeches. "But my name's Stanislaw Jez!" you might cry, triumphantly, only to be whirled, molested and left for dead by marauding principals and their rabidly patriotic branding ethos. Welcome to the party, Seanan O'Ghesigh.

So no time for blogging proper this weather. I've been blinded by pompous nomenclature and impossible addresses for schools with more fadas than funding. If I ever hear another word in that twisted tongue this week, I'm going to rampage through the Gaeltacht on a unicycle made of bazookas. And this from a closet nationalist!

See you when I crawl back out of the poll coinin. Or whatever. Don't correct me. I'm fragile, and also I don't care anymore.

Blamin' Eamon

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:50:00 +0000

Question.

Do you think there's room here...

For Energy Minister Eamon Ryan?

No. I insist that that's not a trick question. I realise that the ridiculous mug above will not convince you of my integrity, for how could I have any doubt that a man who looks like someone's just rammed a set of furry dice up his arse has earned a place on the cuntometer? But appearances can be deceiving, as Mary Harney's inexplicable husband will attest. Looking like a cunt isn't enough to earn a place on the 'ometer. You should have more faith in me not being a superficial wally, you know. Anyway, Eamon Ryan.

Eamon was the poor bollocks saddled with announcing that those claiming rent relief are to lose same if their homes aren't energy efficient - there seems to be some confusion as to whether this includes rent allowance, and we can only hope it doesn't. Hmm, what? Did I say their homes? I meant their landlords' homes. Yes. Those who are looking to ease the pain of hiring someone else's house because they're too fucking shattered by this murky economy to throw up their own pile of bricks are now to be punished for the environmentally contemptuous sins of the landed gentry. Seriously. I'm expecting Charles Stewart Parnell to jump out from behind a bush, yelling, "Ya gullible muppet ya!" into a microphone marked Ireland's Got Gobshites at any minute.

According to the link above, "Mr Ryan insisted that by targeting the tenant allowance, landlords will be pressurised into carrying out the work", which not only beggar's my belief, but steals its last pair of shoes and runs off with its prettiest daughter. Hasn't anyone in government ever met a landlord? Now, fair dues to some of them, because some of them are great. Our current cashbleeder is the best we've ever had, but I have no idea what he'd do if we tried claiming rent allowance or relief. I don't know if he'd help us out, or feck us out, and we're too settled into this comfy rut to want to rock the boat. Nah, I'm not being daft. I'm being realistic. Ireland isn't set up for renting; we certainly don't regulate the rental sector very well. To sum up, there's no landlord that was ever pressurised into doing anything - outside sending over the heavies - because a tenant couldn't pay their rent. Landlords are like tectonic plates; they move slowly, but they throw up a lot of soil doing it. I'd fret on the behalf of anyone who had to confess late payment to a landlord because his attic was only insulated with crusty towels and dead spiders.

To be honest, I think Eamon's trying his best with this one, but that the policy is one devised on the muse of a better Ireland with... hmm, less a shower of cunts than a Light Drizzle. It puts out guidelines for an efficient Ireland, and that's an idea that's not even up to half-baked yet. So I don't know. Does Eamon deserve a place on the cuntometer? I'm serious. It's just that I think that his heart's in the right place, but his arse is so firmly set around the Fianna Fail Dick that no amount of benevolent high-mindedness will lubricate him enough to slither free.

Would blaming Eamon Ryan for the sins of his whole muddled party be as bad as depriving vulnerable citizens for the sins of their landlords? Well, no, obviously. But a place on the 'ometer has to be earned, and I don't know if Eamon, even with his slow assimilation into the ducking and diving of Ireland's right wing, has got what it takes.

Hairly There

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:51:00 +0000

I sent some of my fucktion to ~~great friend~~ ~~wise accomplice~~ ~~artistic soul~~ Kevin today, and was most pleased when he mentioned that I write well from a man's point of view.

"I was born a man," I joked, because I'm a witty motherfucker. And naturally he ignored it like the wan slice of dead humour it was.

But, y'know, I wasn't far off, if I'm to be honest. I was a fella there, for a while.

Interest piqued? It shouldn't be. I wasn't ever a proper bloke, with the reproductive bits and facial hair and compete lack of empathy for anything without perky tits. I was a mock-bloke. A fraud-fella. A pseudo-dude-o. And through no fault of my own.

I had long, blonde hair as a child, down to me arse it was. It was absolutely adorable. I used to get tangled in branches regularly; I looked like fucking Aslan (no, not the band, for Jaysus sake). And one day, my family got fed up of me looking like something from a Calvita ad, or maybe they got fed up of me attracting the odd homeless albatross, or maybe they didn't want me looking anywhere near beguiling going into my teens. For whatever twisted reason, I was marched to the hairdresser, and they lopped all my hair off.

Oh yes. I looked like Harry fucking Potter from the age of eleven up to sixteen, when I became strong enough to wrestle my scissor sisters off when they came a'cackling with the shears.

Harry fucking Potter. I'm not joking. I was the ugliest twelve-year-old girl in existence, and no amount of xworx jeans, East17 tickets, or dexterous Scatman John impersonations could save me from social disaster and romatic doom. I looked like a boy. I looked like a geeky boy, with glasses and pink socks and a mumbling SoCoGaw accent. I was about as sexy as a Vauxhall Cavalier. I hung out with my male cousins, and so obviously I looked male and all - their version of Millhouse, not strong enough to join in their scrapes, not feminine enough not to be clattered alongside them when it all went horribly wrong. I became George from the Famous Five, except Timmyless, because I wasn't even allowed a dog for comforting companionship. I was the family dog. Not even Aslan could have saved me (no, not the band, for Jaysus sake).

My mother thinks I'm insane. Whenever I bring up my tortured adolescence (for superficiality seeps well below skin-level when you're a teenager), she tuts and tells me that I looked "lovely" during my shaved ape years.

"It really suited you," she says.

"What? Looking like I belonged in a Magdalene Laundry?"

*long, Mammy sigh* "You have the right shaped face for short hair. Look at your sisters! They have short hair!"

"They were all married before they went for the chop, though. They had nothing to lose. They didn't have to worry about butch wimmin chatting them up outside Supermacs! THEY'RE IN THEIR FORTIES, MAMMY!"

It wasn't just me, either. The matriarchal tide of uglification swallowed up my cousins, leaving them dazed and confused and awfully cold around the ears. Balls was the only one of us who escaped the shearing, and only because her mother took her a hundred miles away. To this day, I've received no compensation for my victimisation, no official apology. And it bothers me. Nearly as much as the fact my mother has my Potterish school portrait in the sitting room, pride of place and as blatant as genocide.

I'm still very, very bitter about it, as anyone with a fashion disaster foisted upon them should be.

Blog Slog

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:45:00 +0000

Fuckbiscuits! I've come to a decision.

My decision doesn't involve using the term "fuckbiscuits" more often, although that's a good one... yes. Yes. I vow to use "fuckbiscuits" more often. I don't know exactly in what context, but the meter of the whole term is too good to pass up. No, my decision is blog-related, and many of you who stalk my sculpted arse on Twitter and Facebook will have helped me reach the damn thing.

I...

I'm...

... not going anywhere, relax. I am going to blog less rigidly, though. I mean, fuck the lot of you. You don't need five posts a week, one for every workday, do you? There are so many other things I could be doing with my beautifully long and elegant typists' fingers, like writing reams of nasty, cuss-riddled dialogue between two equally heinous fictional characters. Which I'm sure you'll all love, honest to Gawd. No, what I'm going to do from here on in is blog when I have the energy and when I really need to get something off me perkies. You may expect the same number of blog posts a week, then, just not 3,000-word rants when you wake up every morning. Is that ok, like? I don't mean to let anyone down, but I just can't manage to do all the bits I need to do, scribe-style, with this huge Arse weighing me down.

And at the same time I can't help but feel that I'm failing you, my sexy minions (read: Vince). Please understand. If I continue down this path of self-imposed drudgery, where I'm checking my stats every ten minutes with wild eyes and half a bucket of foam clogging up the sides of my potty-mouth, then I won't be able to focus on what's really important. Which is getting my head together; it's so big that it cracked and fell into a number of oddly-shaped pieces on entering my Blogger dashboard this evening. I need to get this stupid fucking manuscript polished, and I need to do something with it, because poor, long-suffering Swe.Ge will kill me if I don't. And you don't want to see him behind bars, do you? He's not a bad ould sort, really.

I'll still be here, open to argument and suggestion. Just, maybe not every day. And maybe at odd times. I just really, really need to give this fiction bullshite a decent squeeze, you see. But once I'm a little more together, this Arse will be as regular as it ever was. Promise. In the meantime, subscribe to the feed, or add me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter, or ransack my record collection on LastFM (all the links are in the sidebar there, at the top, see?). Don't go quiet. I need you lot.

Also, anyone there with a good, clear head for contemporary fiction? Or anyone there with a few ranty ideas for the blog? Or anyone there who can think of a better exclamation than fuckbiscuits? Get in touch, you silken-fingered lovedolls!

Teacher Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:32:00 +0000

Please be gentle. I'm still recovering from Saturday's hen party.

What? Can my hangover possibly be that monstrous, so gigantic that it would blanket half of the following week and all of my writerly focus? No, for fuck's sake! No! It wasn't out with me DJs I was. I didn't wake up with my chin in some lycra-bound cokehead's bosom, twenty miles from the nearest Rizla-stocking garage and missing more than the enamel from my bottom molars and my emergency tube of Bonjela. I was out with teachers this weekend.

And therein lies the reason for the prolonged recovery. Teachers are hard work, so they are.

Mind you, not in the sense that nurses are hard work, or hairdressers. There were no flying Breezer bottles, thongs, or rabid accusations of boyfriend-gawping. Teachers are hard work for many reasons, but generally none alcohol-related.

The "hen" in question was my great pal Lettuce, with whom I shared a hovel during my time in UCC. Lettuce went on to get her HDip. I went on to get knocked up. Both are somewhat of a cross to bear. Both will alter a personality irreparably. I became highly strung and cranky. She became the kind of benevolent dictator your mam would bake an apple tart for. She started waggling her finger subconsciously and learned overnight how to suffocate a bout of swearing. She started referring to anyone under the age of twenty-one as a child. She began offering to parallel park on behalf of more experienced drivers.

"Would you like me to do it for you?" she'd smile, encouragingly.

Because Lettuce is a teacher, she has collected many more of her kind during her years, and so they clung to her on her hen night like the world's most diplomatic army. They alternated between sips of white wine and still water, spoke at length about the promised State funding for the new extension, and finished their hen night meals with a nice cup of tea. And I... well, I sat in the middle with the great Knot Of Self-Preservation tied in my tongue, and put my head under my coffee cup when the inevitable "and are you a teacher yourself?" question sailed gently but pointedly towards me.

For you see, kiddos, there's nothing wrong with teachers, except for the fact that they thoughtfully and empathically expose my utter, utter failings as a rural Irish girleen who wrangled her way into university. Being around teachers and their sensible cars and impressive engagement rings and planning permission reminds me of the path my mammy thought I'd take, the one I tripped up on and bounced drunkenly off.

Still, there's always artistic ranting for free on Blogger, eh?

Smugby

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:00:00 +0000

I wrote before about rugby before, about how I didn't get it, how it made very little sense to me, how surprised I was that the whole country turned into experts on cauliflower ears and Newbridge silverware overnight. And you know what?

Nothing's changed.

Saturday was the date of my great buddy Lettuce's hen party. A gaggle of chirruping wimmin travelled to her home in West Cork and gathered in her sitting room, pretty dresses and sculpted hair and coordinating shoes, and screamed at her television, at fellas beating each other around the middle of a big field, at each other, at God and fate and all that bollocks.

"Go on! GO ON! Ah for fuck's sake, Stringer! He doesn't have the legs! THE LEGS! Ah Jaysus!"

And I sat, half-shunted into the conservatory with my unpatriotic attitude and unpatriotic cup of coffee, and felt confused, and very much left out.

I need to get into rugby, lads. I need to. My social life is suffering. I have nothing in common with my countrymen, and nothing to talk about in workplace canteens, pubs, taxis... I don't understand the excitement in watching horse-like lunatics take two strides at a time down a pitch while opposing lunatics grab at their knees. I have no interest in getting political about ticket distribution. I don't find Brian O'Driscoll manly and heroic. And it's not that I don't understand the rules, or the desired result, or the dedication to the level of fitness and bravery required by ogres trying to till a green and level field using other ogres' heads. It's not even that I don't like team/field sports. I love me a bit of football (I refuse to say soccer, but you may assume I'm talking about soccer). I just don't have any interest in rugby. I cannot dredge it in myself... Oh, Arseheads! I have been found wanting.

I must change. Can you help? Can you inspire me into giving a shite? Please try (ooh, pun alert!). Seriously, without a healthy interest in rugby in Ireland these days, you're relegating yourself to the pariah. Or the "dryballs". And I can't be doing with that. My balls would be slithery wet, if I had any.

Health Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Fri, 01 May 2009 05:04:00 +0000

While the world panics its way into bubble-wrapped hyperbole, where nothing not scrubbed raw and dipped in Dettol can be trusted, Swe.Ge and I have been suffering our own dose of biological warfare, as orchestrated by the condensed Sweary, she who is known as Mini-Me. The little lunatic has a temperature.

She also has a shocking terror of medicine. Dipped in sugar, coated in jam, ground into sweet drinks... doesn't matter. We reason, threaten, bang our heads off walls... doesn't matter. She just cannot fathom the notion of swallowing medicine. She's never been able. Just before she was three years old, she needed a blood test at the hospital, and the experience was seriously traumatic for her. I don't think she's ever recovered. I have a tangled ball of neurosis on my hands, and she's only seven. I despair.

No, really, I do. There's something so horribly gut-wrenching in realising that your child, whom you have this deep, wild love for, whom you only want to protect, doesn't trust you. Won't listen to you. Doesn't understand that you only want to protect her. It's a desperately frustrating and helpless feeling... exhausting, too. I sat for over an hour last night trying to get her to take a small dose of paracetamol, just enough to get her temperature down. I wanted to kill her by the end of it; when we eventually got it into her I was so tired and so close to tears that I couldn't even praise her. She's very rarely sick, thank God. I don't think I could dance this fucking dance with her more than once a year. Oh, I don't know. It's left me too shattered to blog properly.

Amazing how your kids can strip away those layers, and bring you from "calm and controlled" to "barely functioning". I'll get her for this, y'know. The first boy/girlfriend she brings home is going to get the most embarrassing grilling imaginable. Also, I shall dress like Liz McDonald and flirt clumsily with her first boss.

But y'know what's cheering about the echoing pandemic in the news? The fact that the Mexican Health Minister looks just like Droopy. Behold!

Uncanny, no?

Cuntry Music

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:44:00 +0000

Don't mind old age, nearby incinerators, or over-exposure to cattle doused in growth hormones. Self-preservation from the soundtrack to living in the arse end of Ireland is what puts hairs in your ears.

Rural Irish pubs who smugly advertise Live Music! on Saturday nights have not, as our innocent tourists and/or D4 socialites on hen weekends might think, booked a lively trad band to hammer home our gloriously melodic culture to the beat of Irish dancing shoes and a bodhran. They have booked some mild fart with a keyboard and a microphone stand, who will use said keyboard entirely to provide a neverending synthesised waltz while he mouths through Old Flames and Old Shep in strict rotation until the last blue-rinsed biddie is manhandled into a hackney home. You have been warned. Also, this is the only time you'll get a mild fart in an Irish pub. You have been warned of that, too.

(A mild improvement is booking the local scut to do a three hour set on his cd decks for a twenty-first, if you could call Cascada fading into Come On Eileen an improvement on Garth Brooks. Which I don't think you can, so ignore this paragraph.)

My disgust for this kind of bollocks is well-noted at home in South County Galway, but my family have a way of dealing with rebellious young wans with iPods full of flash-in-the-pan electronica.

"Wait til you're our age," they nod, smugly. "You'll be into country music then, oh yes you will."

"I don't think you'll ever see me listening to Mary Black, Mary Duff, or any other kind of Mary with a penchant for bland renditions of songs about lost tractors," I counter, equally smugly.

"You'll see," they say. "You'll see. You'll wake up one day with an appreciation for Christy Moore covers."

"You'll wake up one day with Christy Moore's head under the covers," says I, threateningly. "And his body won't be attached, either."

"We see your future," says they. "And Isla Grant features. Heavily."

"I've seen your past," says I. "And The Carpenters were as cutting edge as you fuckers got."

"I was into Iron Maiden for a while," ventures Nearest Brother.

"Iron Maiden are camp," says I, whereupon he flakes me with a hurley and thus endeth our family spat.

For the record, I would like to state that I will never, ever understand the awkward monster that is Irish Country Music. My mam insists that it is "our" music, Irish music, and for the record I'd like to tell her that she's fucking mad. Irish music doesn't involve twanging and line-dancing! Mick Flavin has no place shiteing all over what's left of our once-potent cultural heritage! Philomena Begley can take a running jump off Daniel O'Donnell's ego! They can all go and knob themselves, as far as I'm concerned; I'll still be into alternative indiefuckingfolktronica when I'm forty. It is a promise I have made to my ears, lest they spurt forth in hairy indignation. Approaching middle age is no excuse for subscribing to watery waltzes! Jesus Christ, older-family-members! Your generation gave us Led Zeppelin, The Kinks, The Clash... what the banjaxing banjos are ye at with Foster and Allen?

Oh, I dunno. My cousin Kidneys has fallen for Isla Grant already, and she's only twenty-four.

Mammy, Where Do Bloggers Come From?

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:57:00 +0000

Balls sat at the kitchen table last night, all flummoxed and furrowed. She opened her mouth, shut it again, pursed her lips, grimaced, and just before I broke out the exorcism kit she managed to ask,

"Is Gort rough?"

Balls is no stranger to the place herself. Bred in Cork but buttered in Galway, she's got the wiry twitchiness of the former and the appreciation for interesting mushrooms of the latter. So her question was more a request for confirmation than information; we know what Gort is like. It's rough. Not dangerous, mind. Just... rough.

It's a tragic truth. Gort was once the literary stronghold of Ireland, with W.B. Yeats composing his tower poetry in Thoor Ballylee, and Lady Augusta Gregory only down the road in Coole Park, getting bollocksed on exotic liqueurs and defacing trees with George Bernard Shaw and Sean O'Casey. And what is the gaff known for now? Meat-processing. Fucking great.

Gort's cultural commandos do seem to have pulled the finger halfway out when it comes to acknowledging their mighty literary past - there's been a small literature festival for the past couple of years, and someone said there's a writer's centre in there somewhere. Funny how I only heard of this after I left? Either I've inspired mah homies to tread the paths of pompous, wordy luncacy in my wake, or they were only waiting for me to settle 100 miles away so they could congratulate each others' use of adjectives without fear of my diving over a table to get my hands round some part-time poet's neck. Because here, I'm afraid, I'm a typical Galway girl - rowdy, mouldy-drunk, and looking for a reason to flake someone.

I wonder how it all went so horribly wrong for us Gort... er... onians. Certainly our scribbly heritage was rammed past our gag reflexes in school. There was once a time when I could have told you W.B. Yeats' hat, shoe, and ego size - although I never did find out what he did with the Spear of Destiny - but now? Well, now you'd be lucky to get the opening line of An Irish Airman Forsees His Death out of me (I think it's "Fuck me, where's that smoke coming from?"). How did we ever lose interest in Gort and its highfalutin past? We could have made a fortune out of it! Inviting Margaret Atwood on expensive retreats, getting stoned with Terry Pratchett in the caverns of our lovely subterranean river, forming powerful but shadowy associations to bring about the downfall of J.K. Rowling; it would have been marvellous. Instead, our primary concerns are the colour of the water and whether that smiling Brazilian in the local nightclub is only after "his hole".

And that's rough. I'd vow to rectify the problem, to reinstate our glorious, open-minded, creative, sexy past, if I didn't burst into flames every time I end up next nor near the homestead. Gort is one of those places I love the idea of, like Morrowind, or Disneyland, or Vincent Cassel's back seat. But being there is a world of fucking hurt. It's rough, Balls. Rough, rough, bow wow rough.

Is your corner of the Arse End famous for something worthy-but-useless? Do share, if only to cheer me up.

Boggerscopes

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:30:00 +0000

I've always fancied myself a psychic (I've also always just plain fancied myself). It runs in the family; apparently half of my cousins see dead people, mostly in their dealers' front gardens at 4am. I've decided to nurture this deep and meaningful side of me, so that hopefully I can wheedle my way out of the recession. Yup, I've seen how much premium phonelines cost, and it excites me like a Pulitzer dipped in Josh Homme's underpants.

I think I'd make a bloody good charlatan, even in this saturated marketplace; there are more Mystic Marys in Ireland than there are hairy babies conceived at Republic Of Loose gigs. So, in order to give myself a bit of an edge, I have dispensed with the usual signs-of-the-zodiac knobology and have classified my countrymen in a way that truly matters: by county. Hup ya boy-ya!

Antrim: Windswept and interesting, you've never been more in demand, but don't let it go to your head. Sooner or later everyone will realise there's no more to you lot then a heap of stones on a beach somewhere, so try to do an Open University course or bring peace or something while you're waiting.
Beware of Norn Irish ad execs demanding freebies; there's nothing long-term in their wooing.

Armagh: With your moon stashed in a barn under a pile of turf, it's important to remember that those around you will struggle to keep up. Not everyone's running on the dizzying fumes of cheap petrol, you know, so slow down and breathe out slowly.
Beware those in counterfeit balaclavas; they might just be the Criminal Assets Bureau.

Carlow: The planets signal a spurt of growth for you this week, both in terms of personal development (you won't drive your motorbike into a tree) and your beard (your beard). Mercury in your rear-view mirror gives you that extra speed to place in one of the forty rallies you've signed up for on Saturday.
Beware of low-flying swallows.

Cavan: Finances may be tight as Jupiter gets the gawks on Tuesday morning. It might be an idea to get on to Paddy "The Knuckles" Murphy and arrange an extension to your homemade mortgage. True, it's another seven years of 100% interest, but that's a small price to pay for having your kneecaps, isn't it?
Beware of skulking henchmen when backing out of that huge driveway.

Clare: Uranus is nearly as huge as your ego this week. You might want to get that checked out. Have you not been hurling well recently or what?
Beware of people from South County Galway. They just plain don't like you.

Cork: C'mere, being naturally highly-strung, like, you may need to keep a hold of your octaves this week for fear of shattering the eardrums of your loved ones, like. Things could come to blows as Mars finishes its bender and loses the run of itself around Thursday, but c'mere, that's ok, there's plenty more blow around here somewhere, like.
Beware of collapsing septums.

Derry: Venus/Londonvenus moves into the third house this month, as the last two were destroyed in arson attacks.
Beware Donegal; it's getting ever closer.

Donegal: With Saturn slipping a disc, it might be a good time to evaluate your life, maybe even stop getting Sligo women pregnant at weekends. There are plenty of decent women in Letterkenny... alright, maybe not Letterkenny, but there are plenty more fish in the s... alright, so you've fished the sea dry, but... ah, just keep doing what you're doing, Donegal. No one outside the Sligo social welfare cares anyway.
Beware of Daniel O'Donnell. He's making a mockery of you all.

Down: Planetary patterns suggest now's the right time to say, "What about ye?" and "Nai you're suckan' diesel!" to the rest of us. Why? Because you guys are funny. Say "siteeeation". Ah, do.
Beware of democracy hidden in Gerry Adams' beard.

Dublin: Recent financial trends have negatively affected your vowels. Going astrologically, it's time take stock and heroin again. The veins in Uranus are plump.
Beware of Dublin 4; it's imploding.

Fermanagh: Ah, come on now. Everyone knows Fermanagh isn't real.

Galway: With Neptune slipping into something a little more comfortable, and the arts festival season of raunchy debauchery nearly upon you, it's imperative you go and get last year's funny rash checked out. It's starting to smell. And no, it's not just something in the water.
Beware the water, all the same.

Kerry: The presence of celestial bodies in your cowshed should make things a little creamier, but the lack of American tourists this year more than compensates. You'll be whinging, moaning and keening again before the week is out.
Beware of high-rise flat caps; like the Aquadome, they're a false economy.

Kildare: With Venus splattered all over your mudguards for the foreseeable future, the twelve-day commute to work is looking less and less attractive. Best not to indulge any thoughts of voluntary redundancy though; the hot-tub won't pay for itself!
Beware of strapped jockeys, of whom the stars say there is an unfortunate abundance.

Kilkenny: Venus is in the house! Mars is in the house! Party in the house! There's a hen party in the house! Who let the hen party into the house? My mam is going to kill me.
Beware those who tell you they've come to Kilkenny for the Comedy festival. They're only there for the drugs.

Laois: With Pluto in your fridge, being landlocked is no excuse for not getting just plain locked. Loosen the grip on the Massey Ferguson, crack open a can of Carling, and let your freckles down - at long last the rest of the country is catching up with the recession you fucking started.
Beware me. I'm going to kill ye!

Leitrim: Neptune, your ruling planet, has made you a watery bogger. Perhaps, with Mars coming into your boxroom, it's time to go against the grain. Maybe try some rice. I hear that's a good one to grow in the wetlands.
Beware of holidaying jackeens in rented Shannon cruisers, although they do sink when you feck bricks at them.

Limerick: With Venus circling your nipples, you might have considered laying down your arms. Don't do it! Cork is only frothing at the Lee basin to reclaim its Tough Bastard crown, and its sons will invade as soon as you stop frightening the shite out of them.
Beware of journalists; they're all in the pay of the Tralee tourist board.

Longford: Same as Leitrim, but instead of rice, grow A PAIR.
Beware of bearded sheep; they're often disguised goats out for a good time.

Louth: Planetary influences notwithstanding, now's a good time to arrange that lock-in in the local pub. Anytime's a good time for a lock-in. You're from fucking Louth, for fuck's sake! Party on!
Beware of liver damage.

Mayo: With Enda Kenny in the Dail, you've finally realised you've seen the pinnacle of your county's success. Don't despair, though. There are still plenty of stag parties in Westport to mug. Or eat. Sure whichever way the hunger grabs ya!
Beware the bottomless lakes, as you probably have seven or eight in your back garden.

Meath: Signs point to it being the right time to formally hand Tommy Tiernan and Hector O'Hackinthebackofthethroat over to Galway. It's becoming clear that you want no more to do with them, so try to spare the blushes of others by being more subtle. It's easier than it looks, even with your big hairy thighs.
Beware the Hill of Tara, it's getting dangerously close to the road.

Monaghan: Miserable Pluto rules, but you're feeling goofy, which is a welcome change from the moaning and whinging about the soil we're used to hearing from you. Celebrate by doing some mushrooms in The Wood. No need to give a more precise location, seeing as most of Monaghan is in a vegetative state.
Beware of native trees; they tend to grow twisted.

Offaly: Zippy Mercury might encourage you to put the skids under those looooong Ooooofally inflections, but don't get ahead of yourself. If you approach normal levels of communication skills too enthusiastically you might end up as Taoiseach. They'll give the job to any ould nunky these days.
Beware offending statuesque Americans searching for their roots.

Roscommon: With Jupiter skulking halfway down the boreen, things could get prickly round Roscommon way. Keep your temper. You're used to sharing principal towns with other counties and you've gotten by without a coastline up til now, so keep that famous, flat, sensible Roscommon head square on your flat, sensible shoulders and... Oi! try to stay awake, you at the back!
Beware of large, inland expanses of water, they're fucking everywhere.

Sligo: Venus might be writhing at your moon, but you'd be well advised to sitting on any amorous feelings with those fertile Donegal men about. Don't be fooled by flattery and the influence of ridiculous half-arsed arts festivals; you're from the sexy county, and people want to plough your field.
Beware of anyone with glinty eyes and glinty pockets.

Tipperary: Saturn is your ruling planet, making you fertile and unwieldy and bi-polar. Being aware of this is key; you need to start acknowledging your split personality and anal penchant for dividing and sorting that which does not need to be divided or sorted.
Beware of Cork, it being right next door and all over the fucking shop.

Tyrone: You're mysterious, and that could work well to your advantage this week. Or any week. I mean, you always have the element of surprise. No one knows anything about Tyrone.
Beware nothing; the rest of us are terrified of you.

Waterford: Conflict will be unavoidable if you don't stop claiming to have a city down there. No one believes you.
Beware the glassy-eyed ould wans inviting you to picket. You just can't win with them.

Westmeath: Your friends dismiss you as flat, daycent for a gallop, and well-paved, but now's your time to shine. With Mars in your back pocket, you should be able to find the energy to hitch a lift out of fucking Westmeath. Maybe to Galway!
Beware of any offers to work on a "stud" there; stud doesn't mean the same thing in Galway (bring condoms).

Wexford: Your ruling planet, the Sun, is in your eyes, so it's worth considering buying a pair of dark glasses. Specsavers are said to be reasonable.
Beware of Dubs clogging up your deckchairs.

Wicklow: Now is the time to nurture those green fingers and begin or expand on that love affair with the great outdoors. All those gangland muppets buried up in the mountains have ripened the soil beautifully.
Beware of flirty cousins trying to steal your Mileys away from you for romps in the hayshed.

Plate Of The Nation

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:44:00 +0000

One of the girls baked a cake the other day.

And none of your winking, nudging, or general sniggerisms back there! It was a real cake. Made with chocolate. And I can state, hand on the place my heart used to be, that there was nothing of the illegal persuasion hidden in amongst the eggs, flour and homely philanthropy. It was Unadulterated Cake. Got that? Then we can proceed.

The aftermath of this particular cake, well outside the redundant, chick-litty bemoanings relating to thighs and bold boyfriends, is there is now a Superfluous Plate in the house, and it's brought me out in an awful rash of nostalgia. Either that or I was allergic to the cake. Anyway.

God be with the days (as my mam might wail) when it was a sign of involvement in a thriving community to have a Superfluous Plate in the house! There once was a grand tradition of sending no one home without a slice of apple tart, for fear they'd be struck down with Famine on their way out the front gate. I know if I was to attempt assembling one full set of matching crockery from my mam's heaving collection, I'd be giving up with a knowing grin and a nice fat spliff after about five minutes. No one of my mother's generation (or, erm... possibly no one of the same social class as us) has a full set of matching crockery. There's more clashing patterns and disjointed themes than on a new-age traveller's tie-die loom, which always adds an unnoticed layer to Christmas Dinner stress... sure Jesus you can't be serving Mike on a different plate to Finbar, not after the incident with the greyhounds back in April, ah Holy Jesus would you not give Mary the one with the yellow flowers sure she eats like a feckin' bird and if you put enough white sauce on her spuds she'll never even notice, we really should give Myna Horgan back that bleddy plate... etc etc. And this because of the ebb and flow of travelling apple tarts and ham sang-wiches, rice krispie buns for the kids and a bit of trifle for the parish priest, who, by the way, must look like he lives on the top floor of a good-sized Dunnes Stores.

In a way, my generation (less generous with our baking skills, as we generally don't have enough to go 'round) has adapted the phenomenon of the Superfluous Plate to suit the haphazard financial times handed down to us by lunatic bankers. Having been fucked out of three or four rental properties by the twenty-first birthday (including the time Mammy demanded an unsustainable €50 a week for washing and ironing), we now have, on average, seven pilfered plates of different sizes and states of repair, our part in the great merry-go-round of landlords' extras. Why, my own very favourite bowl was lifted from the forth rented house I lived in. It's the perfect size for crisps, you see.

Owya

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:05:00 +0000

There is a joke in the arse end of Ireland which goes,

Where do farmers go on their holidays?

HAWAII!!

You'll understand if you know how an enquiry into your wellbeing sounds when uttered in authentic rural Irish. Irish people often skip the hellos, y'see, and plunge entirely into the biological warfare. How are ye?, to Howarye? to the amalgamated Howye? we know and overuse... fuck knows why, because we don't actually care how anyone else is. I know this because I'm a very very bad liar, and am forced by this crippling character quirk to answer truthfully every time. This is very off-putting for those around me.

"Howya Sweary!"

"Not great, to be honest. I had another migraine last night."

My honesty might be socially inept, but at least I don't expect nor on any level want a discussion on my sufferings. I'm answering your howya?/how're things?/story?, and that's that. I haven't yet got to the stage where I revel in elaboration and embellishment. I'm in my twenties. I'm not old.

A friend of mine, recently turned sixty, was telling me the other day about his aches and pains, and it got me to thinking. Not on the nature of complaint - this blog should be proof enough that the Irish enjoy a whinge more than Americans enjoy having a nice day - but on the horrible future that awaits me, should I live to see it. I've never met anyone over the age of forty who didn't have constant aches and pains. People over forty talk about their aches and pains like people under forty talk about their children... "Sure but The Shoulder was awful trouble before, but it's quietening down now that the summer's nearly over. The Leg is being a right bollocks, at me all night and day it is, and the doctor can do no more for The Sniffles, please God we'll have to wait and see how that turns out." And it's not exaggeration, oh no! It's not foppish indulgence in that great whinging tradition! I've seen the wincing, the prescriptions, the ashen faces. Aches and pains are plentiful and real, and waiting at the end of my youth like a sneering, wet-lipped priest at the garden gate of a Catholic childhood. I look into my future, and I quiver and quail.

There's no point trying to dissuade me, really. I know that the aches and pains are coming. Sometimes there's a gentle twinge in my back, a subtle introduction to the world of hurt I'm heading into. At least then my Howye honesty will come to fruition; at last I'll be of the age when I'm expected to answer truthfully, and expected to detail each twinge and doctorly tut-tut. There's no real solace in knowing that, though. Talking through the pain is probably the only way of dealing with it. I mean, The Drugs Don't Work... right?

Ah, well. At least I'm not Swe.Ge, who's losing common sense and youthful lucidity like Christian Bale's losing credibility. In the last couple of days, he's managed to put the handle of the grill pan in the fridge and the frozen Quorn fillets in the pots and pans drawer. Swe.Ge, that is. The only thing Christian Bale's put anywhere is his fist through THE EMPATHY OF THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD.

Watery Excuses.

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:45:00 +0000

Swe.Ge phoned me yesterday afternoon in great excitement.

"Half of the arse end of Ireland is on Joe Duffy's show!" he trumpeted. "YOUR arse end, Sweary! South county Galway! Braying about the water, they are. How it's not safe to drink! The local hotelier was on and everything. You have to listen!"

I didn't, of course. I was at work and besides, I've learned my lesson. I wouldn't listen to Joe Duffy even if he was proposing to my mother live on air. But basically, it seems that my friends, loved ones, and sworn enemies still festering in SoCoGaw are finally realising that the water is a funny colour... because, as much as it depresses me to report, it looks like something you'd catch out of the mouth of a yawning cow.

Now, look. Ireland is, apparently, a first world country, and there's no excuse, no explanation, or no gentle, saviour-like photoshoot of John Gormley's pretty, petty empathy that can justify why we don't have clean, safe drinking water. It is a basic need, both on an ah-come-on-are-you-fucking-braindead-or-what level, and on an investment-in-this-shithole-won't-happen-if-you-can't-turn-a-tap-without-puking-your-ring-out level. There shouldn't be a need for campaigns and Joe Duffy and locals having conniptions on the airwaves. There shouldn't ever be a time where "Boil Notice" becomes a valid term to bandy about at Council meetings. It's more than a shame we can't get something so vital right. It's an embarrassment, and one absolutely sinister at that.

Having said that...

There is a part of me that wonders how the water in SoCoGaw could have possibly gotten so much worse since I packed small-town backbiting for slightly-larger-town sniping. I remember phoning my Mam after I skedaddled to Cork, describing to her, in awe, the clarity of the water in the bath.

"Are you in it yet?" she said.

"No."

"Well, that would explain things."

But seriously. The water in South County Galway is almost unbelieveably murky, and it always has been. Avoiding the taps for an hour or so because the water was going through one of its brief, brown phases was a pasttime I oftentimes gave time to, and I don't remember anyone passing comment on it. At its best, the water is yellow - serial killer of kettles, bane of Zanussi appliances - but no one seemed to think it either lacking or noteworthy. Perhaps because no one from The Sticks ever left The Sticks to seek see-through water elsewhere? Nope. We were mad for emigrating, and often came home just so's to experience the fuzzy feeling of prompting tears on our leaving all over again. So we had experience of other shades of water, and certainly we've been guzzling the brown stuff for years and I don't think we can prove that it's killed anyone. Despite the fact that, on moving to Cork, I could actually see the bottom of the sink, I've never been able to get used to the taste of its tapwater. People tell me it's a vast improvement on the pond-filler you get drib-drabbing out of the taps in Galway, but my tastebuds don't concur. Water in Cork tastes... I dunno, lukewarm even when it's frozen. Water in Galway tastes of limestone, and the Burren, and freedom, and tadpoles. I miss it so.

Not that I'm disagreeing with my fellow Arseketeers. The water is only safe when boiled into the clear, bland stuff you get in Cork, and the rose-tinted wellies I'm trudging through my childhood in are no use to me in this argument; I accept that. The water has gotten worse, even as science and technology has gotten better. It's an absolute travesty. Why we're not getting too angry for something as pointlessly safe as the Joe Duffy show is beyond me.

By the way, I'm blogging through the haze of a migr@ine hangover. If you notice spelung mystooks, plaese 4give. I'm not myself.

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:40:00 +0000

Sorry, kids. I can't blog through this one. Sweary has left the building... and is reeling and vomiting on the steps outside.

See yis tomorrow.

Sock Wan

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:30:00 +0000

I don't have a problem with style gurus. Nah. Like so many, many other kinds of gurus, they neither concern, bother, or indeed... er... darken my doorstep all that much. I concede that, in this superficial world, looking good is important, which is why we're all oohing and awwing and eeking over yer wan on Britain's Got Talent who apparently looks like a hippo's minge (It's true, yo! She didn't even, like, pluck her eyebrows), but has the voice of a much blonder person, or something. I don't know. I'm wedged into Fable II at the moment, so I wasn't really paying attention.

So yup, style is important, and the moral of the Britain's Got Talent story is that you should hide it away so that you can take Simon Cowell unawares, which you won't do in a flattering bikini and sunkissed pins, that's for sure.

You would think that a global recession would be bad news for stylists and, indirectly, for people wishing to stay unique by hiding their stylish side away in order to take Simon Cowell unawares, but you'd be underestimating the tenacity of style gurus and their chameleon-like colour palates. Style has never been more in vogue, now that there's a recession to battle through and compose chin-juttingly gawjuss themes around. We've got the term "recessionista", which refers to dickheads who'd never been inside Dunnes til their estate agent boyfriends ended up in the dole queue. We've got The Sun classifying lip gloss in terms of perceived reader budget. And we've got Gok Wan telling us to invest in timeless, classic pieces so that we can then turn a new look with nothing more than a pair of blue socks and a plastic bangle, like MacGuyver during his New Romantic years.

Gok Wan would want to go knob himself, yes he would.

Look. I have nothing against Gok Wan, in general. He seems affable and slim. But any cunt telling me to deal with my halved household budget by splashing out on classic tailoring and coats made for beautiful durability and much, much wallet raping CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF. The last purchase I could justify right now is an expensive but beautiful wardrobe staple like a double-breasted suit of armour or whatever, even if, with the subtraction of a pair of A-Wear leggings, it could double as day and evening wear. Day and evening wear? Expanding gently on our sofas while trawling through irishjobs.ie does not require smart, classic tailoring; nor does adopting the same position after a beans-out-of-a-tin dinner because you can't afford such distractions as overpriced nightclubs. Classic tailoring? The closest I've gotten to that since this feckin' recession came stomping into the arena is an €11 black cardi I got in Penney's that I wear everywhere, even in the bath. Woe is me, for I smell like a wet dog.

So yeah. Fuck off, Gok Wan. And bring Gay Byrne and Rosanna Davison with you. The only thing more patronising than some loaded prannet telling us to stay socially acceptable through the dark times by adorning ourselves with overpriced garbage, is a loaded prannet telling us that recessions are good for the soul.

By the way, you've just read Arse End's 500th post. Fuck. I feel like I've wasted it now. You win this time, Gok Wan!

And All That Jizz.

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:19:00 +0000

Although I enjoy writing as one, and occasionally stealing a glimpse at their bottoms, in general I have never actually been a young Irishman. Which is why I'm now drawing attention to their habit of watching porn in company. What's up with that, like? I mean, other than their... Y'know what? No. I'm not going to sink into pun-cobbling. I am a fact-seeking missile of non-judgemental clear-headedness today, and woe betide anyone who tries to knock me off that perch and into smutty sniggers. This is a serious subject, honest to Gawd. Young men have this wonderfully blase attitude to teh secks, and I want to learn where I can get one too.

A couple of the boys in the gang were having a right laugh, not so long ago, recounting the recent tale of how one of them, after copulating with his ould doll (or girlfriend, foreign readers!), used a towel to tidy up after. Imagine his delight as the other bloke ran into the bedroom searching for something to dry off his face, and smathered said towel all over himself. Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Is that not a horror story of gargantuan, and squeamish, proportion? Are we not now mortified and nauseated? Well, the boys in our gang weren't. They found the entire escapade hilarious. I envy them. I endeavour to reach them, and their level of understanding about... er... the fragile messiness of humanity's baser urges. Those young fellas are my heroes.

It does seem to be the case with "young fellas" over guys in their 30s and up. Young fellas watch porn together, and tell each other stories about humorously placed root vegetables; I don't know if it's polite reticence that stops more mature blokes harping on about every sexual urge that ever took them unawares, or if this genital-warts-n-all attitude is one that cherry-blossomed in my generation. Now, I know blokes brag - always have done, and long may they continue and all that - but did they only start bragging graphically in recent times? Do enlighten me! I'd ask the lads but I they're too busy bonding over bondage to tell me, and the girls are too mortified to speak of sex without resorting to blushing gestures, and well-placed nods and winks and say-no-mores.

Because "disrespectful", or "misogynistic" or "irresponsible" as these modern male attitudes may seem, I do think it's a vast improvement on our past, when we used to throw female flirts into prisons run by sadistic nuns and leave them there to rot like fucking rubbish. That's the real embarrassment, as far as I'm concerned. But perhaps I'm not seeing the sinister side to sex as socialising. Perhaps young fellas need to start thinking of girlfriends as sacred cows again. Have we strayed too far from the dark side? What do you think?

A Novel Pursuit III: Headfucks.

noreply@blogger.com (Sweary) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:01:00 +0000

I am utterly fed up with my head. I want to remove it. I want to cast it aside, maybe into a turnip field where it can be amongst its own - I don't know. This weather, I am assaulted from all angles by migr@ines and their woolly, nauseating hangovers, which isn't much fun when one is a scribe of the internet-y persuasion and so relies on being able to think, draw pithy conclusions, publish to howls of appreciative laughter, and look at a flickering screen simultaneously. I'd pay for a swap of sorts, if the endeavour was medically sound. I wouldn't mind a go of Paris Hilton's head for a while, or another of equally blissful emptiness. Sounds like heaven on a pogo stick, yes it does.

I think I'm being betrayed by my feeble receptors and whatnot because I'm thinking non-stop about publishers and literary agents these days and getting terribly stressed out about it. I haven't got a business head, you see. I have a skull wrapped round a pulsating sphere of pain and crankiness, likely to explode at any given moment. How does one stay calm and controlled long enough to compose delightful query letters introducing one's life and words when one also has an allergy to codeine and so cannot rely on any painkiller stronger than a tepid fucking bubble bath? It's most, most infuriating. It's... ah, bollocks, here comes another aura...

People often ask me why I'm such a short-tempered she-devil, and to be honest it's because I can't stand celebrated mediocrity, and I see it everywhere. It's in the safe choices of RTE's commissioning. It's in the album charts, where gloss is seen as an acceptable substitute for relevance, talent and sincerity. And it's on the shelves in every bookshop - Jordan's latest "novel", Piers Morgan dishing the bleached dirt, countless light reads about the girl who fancies yer man who turns out to be a cunt so eventually she realises the other fella was the right fella all along with his hidden depths and boundless patience with fickle, vacuous broads who work in advertising aren't boys great though? But it seems I am alone in my nasty decrying and wishing of great trials and diseases on those of us perma-tanned and simpering. Friends wonder why I notice clumsy phrases in genre fiction and why I bother getting pissy about it when 99% of readers don't care. Mammy wonders if I'm not just jealous of the successful. Colleagues tell me to cultivate a sense of humour and some armour-plated apathy. So tell me today, Arseheads. Am I alone on this one? Does the hollow sound you get when you hit the concept of culture with a bag of famished critics not resonate in your addled head? Can you look into Eason's without throwing up on your Dunnes' Stores runners?

Am I, in all fairness, wound a bit too fucking tight after all?

And have you got some mefen@mic acid? Pass it here, then. I'm coming down.