For a long time I had a best friend by the name of Spinky, a real person of the punk persuasion and not the small spoty dog his name might lead you to imagine. The story of Spinky is long and convoluted, but I lack the patience to give the convolutions the time they merit so I'll just tear through it as usual and regret the omissions later.
I went through a transition when I was about twenty two, I had lost all meaningful contact with my friends from school and had shed most of my friends from college somehow. I had also just broken up with my long-term girlfriend and although our friends were still my friends I felt the need to move on. I didn't know it then, but even though I had all the time in the world for them, the scene that those friends created was not my natural habitat, I was just such a good chameleon that I didn't realise it.
All this is retrospective of course, at the time I was just mad for the craic and other people and the way you might force your way into their social circles. I wouldn't have the balls to do it now, but then I'm sober most of the time now so that might have some bearing on it.
The Hairy Fella is the most constant friend I've had since I started college at seventeen, and when I hit this transitiony time I made an effort to catch up with him more often because Hairy knows everybody, even you. Seriously, if I used his real name here you would either know him or one of your friends would know him. Unlike the connections between all other sentient beings there are only two degrees of separation from Hairy; either you have met him, somebody you know has met him or you have never met anybody and exist as a free-floating consciousness spontaneously arisen from a coincidence of electrical charge gradients across the wet leaves of a forest after a storm.
I called into Hairy one halloween friday, just for the chat and maybe to attempt putting the submission on his fully-automated self-twisting rubber arm for pints. But a plan was afoot, and it already involved the pub, which saved me the very inconsiderable effort of engaging the self-twisting arm. First we headed to a gaff on Caple St. where we were to meet people and eat the mushies they were rumored to posses, there was also rumors of fly agaric, reputedly the strongest of strong juju. There wasn't any fly agaric (for sharing), as it turns out, but waving possibilities like that around adds an atmosphere of high adventure to a half-cut stroll across town.
The folk resident in this house on Capel street were proper tokers, so there was nothing brief about the visit as it takes tokers bleedin ages to do anything at all, especially if it involves leaving the house. They were, and still are, real good people, hippie grunge types in the main. I took to them immediately as I was also a hippie grunge type and because they appeared to find it funny when I got loud and offensive, I love it when people react like that because then I don't have to feel terrible when I wake up the next morning with fuzzy memories, the Fear and card-sharp shuffled 12 second snapshots of crying and shouting, the bad kind of shouting.
We headed out to a comedy improv in the Hapenny Bridge Inn where I remember some good natured heckling and some pretty ropey comedy, which is only to be expected as most comics are shite even when they have a script. The details are irrelevant really, I went out with a gang of strangers and had me a good ol time. It's the follow up that is interesting; a week or so later I rock up to that same house on Capel street all on my lonesome, insinuate myself onto the sofa and pretty much declare that "youse people are now my circle of fwends, get used to it hippies". I think I may have used those exact words. The fucking cheek of me. And you wouldn't think it if you met me in real life, as mild mannered as Clark Kent with a migrane.
It worked a treat though, the poor auld soft-touches proved suitably compliant and I've held onto them as my main crew* for something scarily close to thirteen years.
One of these good gentle folk that I met was Pony, and it was in his house that I first met / found Spinky, installed on Ponys sofa, smoking big bongs and talking shite.
*I'm pretty sure they don't see themselves as my crew at all, but thats just another aspect of our relationship that they are not consciously aware of. Goddamn preposition.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Parallels and also divergent quests for truth, and shit like that.
I have been reading a few atheist blogs recently, as evidenced by the blogroll to the right there. I have always been a big fan of reason and the pursuit of truth, and as I lack the patience to think anything through to it's logical conclusion myself it is great to find that other people have done it all for me and presented their findings in a concise, readable and even entertaining fashion.
It is not solely the conclusions themselves or even the structured rationale that leads to them that interest me, as a child I presumed that nobody else believed any of this god'n'cheebus carry on either and that there must be some other reason why we all went to mass, so the arguments in favour of what I always found to be self evident (or more accurately self not-evident) are necessarily a bit predictable.
No, its the arguments from the theist apologists, and the dismantling of these arguments by science and logic, that interest me most. And not for the obvious us-versus-them cheerleading tribalism either, although I can knock a bit of craic out of that too for a while before it gets old.
To be a good thesist apologist requires an ability to understand and use rational thought and also the ability to willingly and consciously abandon it when it leads in the "wrong" direction, replacing it with emotionally derived and fanciful anti-rational thought. In short, a good theist apologist practices a very obvious form of self-deception. And self deception is my new hobby subject, not least because I have certainly been guilty of it in the past and possibly in the present. Which brings me to another field which can parallel this one in almost disturbing fashion; the martial arts.
Where the theological discussions dance around "Is there a God?" and one side bases much of it's argument about an ancient book that states that there is a God and also backs up this statement by claiming that the book is in fact the word of God and so cannot be wrong, the martial arts dance around various themes of "does this technique or training system work?" and some of the many sides base much of their training about ancient traditions of movement that have little obvious relevance to defending oneself or fighting in general, and then try to rationalise how these movements are useful.
While I sit smugly on the side of the rational in the former discussion, I flounder on the side of the traditional apologist in the latter. The similarity between the theist apologist and the traditional martial art apologist is that we are both using rational argument to justify positions that we did not arrive at through reason. If you assume the answer and then proceed to steer the question so that it leads to that answer then the whole exercise spontaneously morphs into a stinking pile of dishonest horseshit.
I now need to dig myself out of this position, because if I am going to deceive myself about something, I'd prefer not to know about it.
There is light at the end of the sewer however, the traditional arts may yet prove to be valid and useful training tools.
The most obvious honest direction for martial arts is very close to the MMA approach; take all your techniques from proven combat sports like boxing, Muay Thai and wrestling, and dump everything else. The reality-based approach is another honest martial route, this is the direction taken by Krav Maga and numerous other "street" martial arts and consists of a very reductionist philosophy, essentially trying to keep to a minimal set of simple techniques that can be adapted to many situations, the simple approach ensures that a technique is easy to learn, execute and, theoretically, its effectiveness is more predictable.
But to outright abandon the traditional arts raises the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Somewhere back in time what are now the mysterious dance-like moves of the traditional arts were almost certainly a form of shadow boxing or shadow wrestling. That is, the person throwing the moves knew exactly what they were and had learned the techniques by doing them on another person, the shadow stuff was just solo practice. That we no longer know what the original intention for most of those moves shouldn't stop us from trying to either reverse engineer them or experiment with the application of traditional moves in a realistic setting to see what might be learned. This is the direction I am now pursuing and it is proving to be full of surprises, not least of all that it seems to be leading to a style of self defense that may well be more practical than the reality-based systems, particularly when combined with those systems.
One of the best sources of inspiration in this regard that I have found is Dan Djurdjevic over on The Way of Least Resistance. Dan's blog has had a big influence on the direction I am taking my own training in, and in general he is very rational and healthily skeptical in his approach to martial arts. One exception sticks out however, he refers to hydrostatic shock in a couple of places in relation to empty handed combat. Hydrostatic shock is a phenomenon related to high velocity bullet impacts, and not to relatively low velocity punches. This is more a misapplication of scientific theory than flat out pseudo-science, but it trips along the ledge (where can be seen the worth of poorly supported conjecture, or something), and that gives me comfort in an odd way, like the inverse of Morriseys "we hate it when our friends become successful", it's good to know that none of us are unique in our internal quests for truth.
It is not solely the conclusions themselves or even the structured rationale that leads to them that interest me, as a child I presumed that nobody else believed any of this god'n'cheebus carry on either and that there must be some other reason why we all went to mass, so the arguments in favour of what I always found to be self evident (or more accurately self not-evident) are necessarily a bit predictable.
No, its the arguments from the theist apologists, and the dismantling of these arguments by science and logic, that interest me most. And not for the obvious us-versus-them cheerleading tribalism either, although I can knock a bit of craic out of that too for a while before it gets old.
To be a good thesist apologist requires an ability to understand and use rational thought and also the ability to willingly and consciously abandon it when it leads in the "wrong" direction, replacing it with emotionally derived and fanciful anti-rational thought. In short, a good theist apologist practices a very obvious form of self-deception. And self deception is my new hobby subject, not least because I have certainly been guilty of it in the past and possibly in the present. Which brings me to another field which can parallel this one in almost disturbing fashion; the martial arts.
Where the theological discussions dance around "Is there a God?" and one side bases much of it's argument about an ancient book that states that there is a God and also backs up this statement by claiming that the book is in fact the word of God and so cannot be wrong, the martial arts dance around various themes of "does this technique or training system work?" and some of the many sides base much of their training about ancient traditions of movement that have little obvious relevance to defending oneself or fighting in general, and then try to rationalise how these movements are useful.
While I sit smugly on the side of the rational in the former discussion, I flounder on the side of the traditional apologist in the latter. The similarity between the theist apologist and the traditional martial art apologist is that we are both using rational argument to justify positions that we did not arrive at through reason. If you assume the answer and then proceed to steer the question so that it leads to that answer then the whole exercise spontaneously morphs into a stinking pile of dishonest horseshit.
I now need to dig myself out of this position, because if I am going to deceive myself about something, I'd prefer not to know about it.
There is light at the end of the sewer however, the traditional arts may yet prove to be valid and useful training tools.
The most obvious honest direction for martial arts is very close to the MMA approach; take all your techniques from proven combat sports like boxing, Muay Thai and wrestling, and dump everything else. The reality-based approach is another honest martial route, this is the direction taken by Krav Maga and numerous other "street" martial arts and consists of a very reductionist philosophy, essentially trying to keep to a minimal set of simple techniques that can be adapted to many situations, the simple approach ensures that a technique is easy to learn, execute and, theoretically, its effectiveness is more predictable.
But to outright abandon the traditional arts raises the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Somewhere back in time what are now the mysterious dance-like moves of the traditional arts were almost certainly a form of shadow boxing or shadow wrestling. That is, the person throwing the moves knew exactly what they were and had learned the techniques by doing them on another person, the shadow stuff was just solo practice. That we no longer know what the original intention for most of those moves shouldn't stop us from trying to either reverse engineer them or experiment with the application of traditional moves in a realistic setting to see what might be learned. This is the direction I am now pursuing and it is proving to be full of surprises, not least of all that it seems to be leading to a style of self defense that may well be more practical than the reality-based systems, particularly when combined with those systems.
One of the best sources of inspiration in this regard that I have found is Dan Djurdjevic over on The Way of Least Resistance. Dan's blog has had a big influence on the direction I am taking my own training in, and in general he is very rational and healthily skeptical in his approach to martial arts. One exception sticks out however, he refers to hydrostatic shock in a couple of places in relation to empty handed combat. Hydrostatic shock is a phenomenon related to high velocity bullet impacts, and not to relatively low velocity punches. This is more a misapplication of scientific theory than flat out pseudo-science, but it trips along the ledge (where can be seen the worth of poorly supported conjecture, or something), and that gives me comfort in an odd way, like the inverse of Morriseys "we hate it when our friends become successful", it's good to know that none of us are unique in our internal quests for truth.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
An apparent contradiction.
Hundreds of great bands have appeared since the evolution of rock and roll, and out of those great bands a few shining stars have blazed much brighter than the rest. Led Zep, Nirvana, The Beatles, Echo and The Bunnymen (yes, really, go listen to Ocean Rain you fucking Philistine).
So how come none of them are fit to kiss the arse of The Jesus and Mary Chain, a band that shouldn't be considered all that special by any sensible measure ?
Must be the morning thats in it.
So how come none of them are fit to kiss the arse of The Jesus and Mary Chain, a band that shouldn't be considered all that special by any sensible measure ?
Must be the morning thats in it.
Friday, October 29, 2010
the bare-faced cheek.
Example one, of the Hairy fellas nefarious carry-on:
It started with a girl. No, that's not accurate, it started with a urinary tract infection.
Hairy was pissing blood, or bloody wee, for all the difference that makes. It was an ongoing issue over a couple of weeks, we were all kept up to date with the pinkening of the stream on a day to day basis, and I for one felt deeply indebted to Hairy for this touching and utterly needless window onto his inner-life. If the accompanying pantomime seemed extravagant (did I really need to watch a man act out the imagined actions of his own abused kidney?), well fuck it, what else would we listening to of a thursday evening drowning in Dutch Gold?
Hairy lived in digs at the time, I think, or maybe he was sharing a room with somebody, either way he couldn't bring a girl home for the dirty deed.
And there was a girl, more than that, a woman, a married woman. That was pretty exotic in our circles, the only married woman most of us knew were our mothers. I was living an early twenty-something life in Dublin, which consists of interacting almost entirely with other people in the exact same age group and social situation, which is great fun and very liberating, but comes with the cost of a total erosion of the ability to communicate with proper adults (people with responsibilities). Hairy never suffered from this social retardation, and as a result of his ability to talk frankly and openly to anybody at all he frequently made friends and picked up chicks from outside our socio-economic-whatever stratum.
This is not always a good thing, Hairy is the only man I have ever known to actually sleep with his friends mother, a woman that Hairy himself described as looking a lot like Bob Dylan.
So Hairy had a meeting set with this lady, and no place to entertain her.I was working that night, can't remember where, but I was coming home later for some boozing, Hairy only needed the room for a couple of hours anyway, so that was that, all panned out and militarty like. We had a few beers before I left for work, and I distinctly remember haveing one of my rare gemlike comic flashes: " ...And here listen Hairy, don't be leaving any strawberry milkshake on my bed ye durty fecker", laughs all round, hero exits.
Hero re-enters some 8 hours later, much drinking and ribaldry follows.
A couple of days later I met the Hairy Fella in his natural habitat, the Dodgy Few or maybe WheelieBins , and delighted with himself he launches into a story vaguely resembling the set-up I described here, only with a twist ending,.In this new ending I walk into the living room the next morning with a gooey glob of pink stuff hanging from my cheek unbeknownst to myself, and the Hairy fella says "ahar har Kfs, I left ya a wee strawberry milkshake on yer pillow last night." Laughs all round, Hero stands flabbergasted.
Its not the fabrication of filthy lies in pursuit of a good story that gets me, although I was there man, that didn't even happen a little bit you fucking nut.
No, its my line, he stole my fucking line and put it into his own poxy gob, the durty thief.
It started with a girl. No, that's not accurate, it started with a urinary tract infection.
Hairy was pissing blood, or bloody wee, for all the difference that makes. It was an ongoing issue over a couple of weeks, we were all kept up to date with the pinkening of the stream on a day to day basis, and I for one felt deeply indebted to Hairy for this touching and utterly needless window onto his inner-life. If the accompanying pantomime seemed extravagant (did I really need to watch a man act out the imagined actions of his own abused kidney?), well fuck it, what else would we listening to of a thursday evening drowning in Dutch Gold?
Hairy lived in digs at the time, I think, or maybe he was sharing a room with somebody, either way he couldn't bring a girl home for the dirty deed.
And there was a girl, more than that, a woman, a married woman. That was pretty exotic in our circles, the only married woman most of us knew were our mothers. I was living an early twenty-something life in Dublin, which consists of interacting almost entirely with other people in the exact same age group and social situation, which is great fun and very liberating, but comes with the cost of a total erosion of the ability to communicate with proper adults (people with responsibilities). Hairy never suffered from this social retardation, and as a result of his ability to talk frankly and openly to anybody at all he frequently made friends and picked up chicks from outside our socio-economic-whatever stratum.
This is not always a good thing, Hairy is the only man I have ever known to actually sleep with his friends mother, a woman that Hairy himself described as looking a lot like Bob Dylan.
So Hairy had a meeting set with this lady, and no place to entertain her.I was working that night, can't remember where, but I was coming home later for some boozing, Hairy only needed the room for a couple of hours anyway, so that was that, all panned out and militarty like. We had a few beers before I left for work, and I distinctly remember haveing one of my rare gemlike comic flashes: " ...And here listen Hairy, don't be leaving any strawberry milkshake on my bed ye durty fecker", laughs all round, hero exits.
Hero re-enters some 8 hours later, much drinking and ribaldry follows.
A couple of days later I met the Hairy Fella in his natural habitat, the Dodgy Few or maybe WheelieBins , and delighted with himself he launches into a story vaguely resembling the set-up I described here, only with a twist ending,.In this new ending I walk into the living room the next morning with a gooey glob of pink stuff hanging from my cheek unbeknownst to myself, and the Hairy fella says "ahar har Kfs, I left ya a wee strawberry milkshake on yer pillow last night." Laughs all round, Hero stands flabbergasted.
Its not the fabrication of filthy lies in pursuit of a good story that gets me, although I was there man, that didn't even happen a little bit you fucking nut.
No, its my line, he stole my fucking line and put it into his own poxy gob, the durty thief.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
thieves and digressions
And the Hariry Fella, come to think of it, is not just an epic liar but a stinking thief too.
Picture this;
Myself and Biffo lived in a weird damp one bedroom basement grotbox, blessed with internationally famous bent railings in the front yard. Internationally famous because they were bent, and the concrete plinth they sprouted from was cracked, split and shifted, by The General's car as he failed spectacularly to turn either left or right at a t-junction. Not bad driving though when you consider that he was in fact dead at the time, having been shot multiple times through the front windscreen with a .357 magnum revolver. Kevin Spacy went on to make a cheeky-chappie movie based on the hilarious adventures of Martin The General Cahill. Mischevous pranks such as car-bombing and murder were toned down in the movie, replaced with the shatteringly effective symbolism of Mr.Spacy stealing cigarettes from a newsagents in Wicklow.
Previous to living there I lived in a bedsit in the middle of Ranelagh village. Now that was a reall shithole, all my neighbours were eastern health board lunatics, constantly trying to invite themselves into my place, probably out of loneliness but I couldn't give a flying fuck as they were all creepy and strange. Starey Eyed Ann managed to talk her way in once, she was this pretty nutjob that hung about Rathmines and Ranelagh. I knew she was nuts because I used to work in a chipper in Rathmines and we had a coffee incident once that involved some very rain man-like rapid repetition of short sentences, the meaning of words slipping further from her with every iteration. And that was before I moved into the bedsit and realised I had just gained her as a neighbour. Anyway once she was in and tea-ed (if someone enters my house they must have tea, its the rule) there was no getting shut of her, as you would expect, I finally had to do the Well I'm heading out now, so... routine. And then of course I actually had to fucking go out and not comeback for ages, just in case.
Also there was only one toilet in the building, and that was on the third floor, I used to load up a spray bottle with bleach and water occasionally and do a drive by bleaching of the carpet and facilities. Pissing into the wind, the irony.
The one great feature that made this bedsit nearly almost habitable, though not for humans, obviously, was the window. A big Georgian front room window, from knee height to about eight foot off the floor. The house was set back from the road because these big old houses have proper front gardens, and the Georgian split level style meant that even though I was technically on the first/ground floor I was about two meters above ground level, affording me a kings view of all that passed on my hundred meter stretch of Ranelagh.A kings view is right. I had two armchairs pulled up to the window and myself and either Spinky or Evileye would spend the night drinking cheap beer and smoking big spliffs and watching the professional lady come and go from the little discrete lane across the road. Not that she operated in the lane itself, there were more old houses snuged away behind the banks and shops of the main street.
Evileye taught me all his techniques for rolling masterful spliffs while we grew into them armchairs, it's a fond memory and it's a shame that I lost the love of smoking because if I hadn't then I could have a little memory to myself with every skin-up.
But despite the window I was pretty desperate to get out of there after a bit. And I was shocking quick to take my chance when it rolled by.
I was walking home drunk, the best way to walk home, when I met Clougherhead on the road. Now I didn't really know Clougherhead that well, but he worked in the local spar with my mate Sly and we'd been introduced a few times and he seemed like a good guy. So I dragged him back to my place for tea, because tea and a chat and drunkenness go well together. It happened that he had a mate living around the corner that needed a new guy to move in, or something, the details were unclear, but what was clear was the possibility of an escape from dumpsville.
We rocked around the corner to the lads house to see what way the habitation situation was evolving.
The situation was this: One of the two lads, who were brothers, was moving elsewhere, and needed to be replaced for a short time before the other brother also moved on. At the same time there was another, better, flat in the house next door, both houses being conveniently owned by the same landlord, where more of the same gang lived. One of the residents of this second flat were also moving on, though not immediately.
The plan: myself and the remaining brother, Biffo, would move into the good flat. Myself and one of the other lads, the Saint, would pay rent, Biffo and Kev would sleep on the floor for a while before going wherever they were going.
This was all settled on within a half hour visit to the two brothers, I don't think Kev and the Saint were consulted until after the decisions were made. The meeting was cut short because the boys were on the way to a party and I shuffled off home, all Hanibal headed and loving plans and they way they might come together.
The very next evening I rolled up to the new gaff with a shopping trolley full of my stuff, and met my new flatmates, two of whom I had never met and Biffo, who I didn't have a chance of recognising since I was pretty drunk the night before.
Biffo was wearing a pretty hungover head, a bit squinty like, but fair play to the man he pulled it together pretty quick, remembering bits of details and the grand plan eventually too. It took us about another four or five trolley trips to get the rest of my house moved, I don't have a clue where I found the trolley, but I know it wasn't from fucking spar, as two morons came out from the shop to tell us that it belonged to them . Really? then why does it say Dunnes Stores all over the handle?
If you are going to accuse two people of grand-theft-manual when you find them pushing a trolley full of lamps and books up Ranelagh main street at midnight then you should probably check and see if it is in fact your trolley. You twits.
Two beds in the gaff, and two people paying rent, so you'd think there would be no arguing over who actually gets to sleep in the beds, if you were sane, decent and not from Offaly that is. I got my bed but Biffo somehow convinced the Saint, with an amazing mix of faulty logic and irrelevant red-herring throwing,
that he (the Saint) owed Biffo from some previous couch crashing, so the Saint got the floor between the two beds. Indefinitely. And paid rent for the privilege, while the freeloader snored away in the smug duvet.
Biffo - and enduring monument to the power of ignorance and manipulation.
I knew this post would decay into a mess of digressions, I'll get on to the hairy fella and why he's a thief and a liar in the next one. Now that the stage is set.
Picture this;
Myself and Biffo lived in a weird damp one bedroom basement grotbox, blessed with internationally famous bent railings in the front yard. Internationally famous because they were bent, and the concrete plinth they sprouted from was cracked, split and shifted, by The General's car as he failed spectacularly to turn either left or right at a t-junction. Not bad driving though when you consider that he was in fact dead at the time, having been shot multiple times through the front windscreen with a .357 magnum revolver. Kevin Spacy went on to make a cheeky-chappie movie based on the hilarious adventures of Martin The General Cahill. Mischevous pranks such as car-bombing and murder were toned down in the movie, replaced with the shatteringly effective symbolism of Mr.Spacy stealing cigarettes from a newsagents in Wicklow.
Previous to living there I lived in a bedsit in the middle of Ranelagh village. Now that was a reall shithole, all my neighbours were eastern health board lunatics, constantly trying to invite themselves into my place, probably out of loneliness but I couldn't give a flying fuck as they were all creepy and strange. Starey Eyed Ann managed to talk her way in once, she was this pretty nutjob that hung about Rathmines and Ranelagh. I knew she was nuts because I used to work in a chipper in Rathmines and we had a coffee incident once that involved some very rain man-like rapid repetition of short sentences, the meaning of words slipping further from her with every iteration. And that was before I moved into the bedsit and realised I had just gained her as a neighbour. Anyway once she was in and tea-ed (if someone enters my house they must have tea, its the rule) there was no getting shut of her, as you would expect, I finally had to do the Well I'm heading out now, so... routine. And then of course I actually had to fucking go out and not comeback for ages, just in case.
Also there was only one toilet in the building, and that was on the third floor, I used to load up a spray bottle with bleach and water occasionally and do a drive by bleaching of the carpet and facilities. Pissing into the wind, the irony.
The one great feature that made this bedsit nearly almost habitable, though not for humans, obviously, was the window. A big Georgian front room window, from knee height to about eight foot off the floor. The house was set back from the road because these big old houses have proper front gardens, and the Georgian split level style meant that even though I was technically on the first/ground floor I was about two meters above ground level, affording me a kings view of all that passed on my hundred meter stretch of Ranelagh.A kings view is right. I had two armchairs pulled up to the window and myself and either Spinky or Evileye would spend the night drinking cheap beer and smoking big spliffs and watching the professional lady come and go from the little discrete lane across the road. Not that she operated in the lane itself, there were more old houses snuged away behind the banks and shops of the main street.
Evileye taught me all his techniques for rolling masterful spliffs while we grew into them armchairs, it's a fond memory and it's a shame that I lost the love of smoking because if I hadn't then I could have a little memory to myself with every skin-up.
But despite the window I was pretty desperate to get out of there after a bit. And I was shocking quick to take my chance when it rolled by.
I was walking home drunk, the best way to walk home, when I met Clougherhead on the road. Now I didn't really know Clougherhead that well, but he worked in the local spar with my mate Sly and we'd been introduced a few times and he seemed like a good guy. So I dragged him back to my place for tea, because tea and a chat and drunkenness go well together. It happened that he had a mate living around the corner that needed a new guy to move in, or something, the details were unclear, but what was clear was the possibility of an escape from dumpsville.
We rocked around the corner to the lads house to see what way the habitation situation was evolving.
The situation was this: One of the two lads, who were brothers, was moving elsewhere, and needed to be replaced for a short time before the other brother also moved on. At the same time there was another, better, flat in the house next door, both houses being conveniently owned by the same landlord, where more of the same gang lived. One of the residents of this second flat were also moving on, though not immediately.
The plan: myself and the remaining brother, Biffo, would move into the good flat. Myself and one of the other lads, the Saint, would pay rent, Biffo and Kev would sleep on the floor for a while before going wherever they were going.
This was all settled on within a half hour visit to the two brothers, I don't think Kev and the Saint were consulted until after the decisions were made. The meeting was cut short because the boys were on the way to a party and I shuffled off home, all Hanibal headed and loving plans and they way they might come together.
The very next evening I rolled up to the new gaff with a shopping trolley full of my stuff, and met my new flatmates, two of whom I had never met and Biffo, who I didn't have a chance of recognising since I was pretty drunk the night before.
Biffo was wearing a pretty hungover head, a bit squinty like, but fair play to the man he pulled it together pretty quick, remembering bits of details and the grand plan eventually too. It took us about another four or five trolley trips to get the rest of my house moved, I don't have a clue where I found the trolley, but I know it wasn't from fucking spar, as two morons came out from the shop to tell us that it belonged to them . Really? then why does it say Dunnes Stores all over the handle?
If you are going to accuse two people of grand-theft-manual when you find them pushing a trolley full of lamps and books up Ranelagh main street at midnight then you should probably check and see if it is in fact your trolley. You twits.
Two beds in the gaff, and two people paying rent, so you'd think there would be no arguing over who actually gets to sleep in the beds, if you were sane, decent and not from Offaly that is. I got my bed but Biffo somehow convinced the Saint, with an amazing mix of faulty logic and irrelevant red-herring throwing,
that he (the Saint) owed Biffo from some previous couch crashing, so the Saint got the floor between the two beds. Indefinitely. And paid rent for the privilege, while the freeloader snored away in the smug duvet.
Biffo - and enduring monument to the power of ignorance and manipulation.
I knew this post would decay into a mess of digressions, I'll get on to the hairy fella and why he's a thief and a liar in the next one. Now that the stage is set.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Liars
I have always had liars for friends, more so when we were all a little younger, but it's not like I jettisoned the distrustful bastards when I passed thirty, so most of them are still hanging about there somewhere. I don't understand it, I can't lie myself and certainly never to my friends, that's the point of having friends, no?
My best friend when I was in the final years of secondary school was a liar through and through, he'd lie about anything, I'd meet him in the one nightclub we could get into and Mod would tell me he was off his face on mushrooms or acid or booze when he was clearly sober as a judge. He told lies about the bands he had gone to see or if he couldn't make it out for something he'd tell fibs about meeting some chick. To this day he'll make shit excuses if he doesn't want to meet up for whatever reason, although I only see him about once every two years so it's not really an issue, but fucks sake all the same.
The truth of it is that the lies were totally unnecessary, Mod was by far the coolest guy in the school, for all his horseshit he really did go to Manchester and see bands, he really did have girlfriends from outside the school, from ouotside the town even. His sense of cool was unmatched, I owe him massively for saving me from my own dorkishness.
Mod took a shine to me for some reason and took me under his wing. I remember in fifth year of school, this was pre-transition year so I must have been about 15, our year did this lame 24hour wakeathon thing in the local community hall to raise money for a charity. Yes, that's right, one hundred odd fifteen year olds stayed awake all night for charity. And not for social dramatics and trouser riding at all.
Anyway, my previous social interaction with Mod consisted of the odd howya and him kneeing me in the nuts for a laugh once while standing outside a classroom waiting to get in. I didn't hold this against him though because I was a pussy and also because even after three years in school I still didn't know exactly who was who in my year and was never sure exactly who it was that had lifted me with that almighty knee of injustice. This inability to remember names or faces or events still troubles me but I have learned to let other people repeatedly fill me in on the finer details like their names and where I met them before. Also I have learned to knock the bollicks out of anyone that attempts violence on my person immediately so as to avoid confusion in the longer run.
I remember meeting Mod in a corridor that night and having an auld chat about bands and stuff. Grunge was just happening and we were both really digging it, and the shoegazing scene and the Madchester thing also. Mod told me not to be wearing my shirt cuffs all buttoned up, they should be open and sloppy. He was dead right, and we were hanging out pretty solidly from then on.
Mod got me into bands that nobody our age had even the remotest clue about, like the Jam and Tom Jones. We were rockin out to Tom when he was pretty much the uncoolest person on the planet, Mod just had that ear for quality, he didn't have to wait for anybody's fucking period revival or semi-ironic comeback.
We were in a punk band too, Mod being the front man obviously. Looking back now I can't believe I squandered the chance we had to be really good, a front man like Mod was is one in several thousand at best, he could actually sing on top of the swagger, he sang for his leaving cert in music and nobody gave him shit for it because he was somehow above slagging.. But I fucked off to college thinking that nothing would change, because people are amazingly stupid when young.
He's a house DJ now, which makes little sense to me, I mean the stuff he plays is alright but lacks the solid balls and innovation of techno, and I never could get past the innate cheese of house, but sure there you go.
I think I finally tired of not believing anything he said and that probably had a big influence on why we drifted apart, I regret that because I went on to have quite a few liars for mates and learned to not give a shit about insignificant truths and untruths. As the Hairy Fella, a notorious and celebrated liar, has repeatedly declared "Jaysus lad, I wouldn't be the type of man to let the truth get in the way of a good story".
And I do love a good story.
My best friend when I was in the final years of secondary school was a liar through and through, he'd lie about anything, I'd meet him in the one nightclub we could get into and Mod would tell me he was off his face on mushrooms or acid or booze when he was clearly sober as a judge. He told lies about the bands he had gone to see or if he couldn't make it out for something he'd tell fibs about meeting some chick. To this day he'll make shit excuses if he doesn't want to meet up for whatever reason, although I only see him about once every two years so it's not really an issue, but fucks sake all the same.
The truth of it is that the lies were totally unnecessary, Mod was by far the coolest guy in the school, for all his horseshit he really did go to Manchester and see bands, he really did have girlfriends from outside the school, from ouotside the town even. His sense of cool was unmatched, I owe him massively for saving me from my own dorkishness.
Mod took a shine to me for some reason and took me under his wing. I remember in fifth year of school, this was pre-transition year so I must have been about 15, our year did this lame 24hour wakeathon thing in the local community hall to raise money for a charity. Yes, that's right, one hundred odd fifteen year olds stayed awake all night for charity. And not for social dramatics and trouser riding at all.
Anyway, my previous social interaction with Mod consisted of the odd howya and him kneeing me in the nuts for a laugh once while standing outside a classroom waiting to get in. I didn't hold this against him though because I was a pussy and also because even after three years in school I still didn't know exactly who was who in my year and was never sure exactly who it was that had lifted me with that almighty knee of injustice. This inability to remember names or faces or events still troubles me but I have learned to let other people repeatedly fill me in on the finer details like their names and where I met them before. Also I have learned to knock the bollicks out of anyone that attempts violence on my person immediately so as to avoid confusion in the longer run.
I remember meeting Mod in a corridor that night and having an auld chat about bands and stuff. Grunge was just happening and we were both really digging it, and the shoegazing scene and the Madchester thing also. Mod told me not to be wearing my shirt cuffs all buttoned up, they should be open and sloppy. He was dead right, and we were hanging out pretty solidly from then on.
Mod got me into bands that nobody our age had even the remotest clue about, like the Jam and Tom Jones. We were rockin out to Tom when he was pretty much the uncoolest person on the planet, Mod just had that ear for quality, he didn't have to wait for anybody's fucking period revival or semi-ironic comeback.
We were in a punk band too, Mod being the front man obviously. Looking back now I can't believe I squandered the chance we had to be really good, a front man like Mod was is one in several thousand at best, he could actually sing on top of the swagger, he sang for his leaving cert in music and nobody gave him shit for it because he was somehow above slagging.. But I fucked off to college thinking that nothing would change, because people are amazingly stupid when young.
He's a house DJ now, which makes little sense to me, I mean the stuff he plays is alright but lacks the solid balls and innovation of techno, and I never could get past the innate cheese of house, but sure there you go.
I think I finally tired of not believing anything he said and that probably had a big influence on why we drifted apart, I regret that because I went on to have quite a few liars for mates and learned to not give a shit about insignificant truths and untruths. As the Hairy Fella, a notorious and celebrated liar, has repeatedly declared "Jaysus lad, I wouldn't be the type of man to let the truth get in the way of a good story".
And I do love a good story.
Friday, September 24, 2010
the perfect line.
Let me tell you about this guy, a Polish guy named Marius. Polish meaning from Poland and not pole-ish as in tall and cylindrical or polish as in shiny. Just to be clear.
He hooked up with my friend Superfast about a year ago and she liked him enough to introduce him to the rest of the zoo. God bless Superfast and her amazing ability to pick the strangest boys as accessories. The last one couldn't really speak english at all, and maybe this was part of the charm because Superfast never shuts the fuck up. And the first one, meaning the guy she was with when I first met her, was a pure dodgy dealer from sunny seaside Bray, a man famous for shitty deals to his friends and for punching holes in the wall during emotional moments. Crazy J's Snakepit (on account of the snakes, and also on account of Crazy J) was where they lived, a pretty nice flat in Rathmines with no lock on the building's front door and the occasional junky infestation in the hall. Classy like.
But that was a long time ago and far, far away. Marius is a different bottle of gin altogether. He's a big calm rugged chiselled dude all full of enthusiasm for everything and an aura of honesty and good will. It's a good thing he's not in the army because he'd almost certainly spend his whole time jumping on grenades and the like in random and unnecessary acts of heroism.
Marius is also a nut, of course, Superfast likes them nutty.
If I have learned one thing in my several years of consciousness, and there's little evidence to show that I have, its that everyone is a few diamonds short of a heist and the entire world is populated by whacky loons. That said, whacky loonery is relative and theres always room for erratics straying from the standard deviation.
On a night full of stories, in a land far from home, the sun came up sometime after 6am and buses arrived to take us back to town. Marius has a great affection for Cherub, as we all do, and none of us really get to see Cherub too often as he lives in the wesht, in one of them sparsely populated counties that never win anything in the GAA. Anyway Marius, in a heightened state of totally fuckedness, managed to engineer the boarding so himself and his good friend Cherub got the two seats up beside the driver, much to the delight of said sober and early-rising driver .
It was so important that we all knew of this marvelous feat. Marius propped himself up with this elbows on the back of his seat and his sunburn and his matching Hawaiian shirt and shorts combo, panama hat and aviator shades, calling out "Hey we got the best seats, me and Cherub, we got the best seats". And we weren't laughing at him exactly, well we were, but in the friendly way you do when your friend is visiting baloobas-town and doesn't seem to know it. He took mild offence anyway, maybe just because we were not as impressed as he thought we would be at his seating genius, and his honest, plaintive polish-accented voice rose up as he placed his palm on his chest and said "I just have to say what is in my heart".
Jaysus, I nearly suffocated with the mirth.
It probably didn't help that I was full of strong drugs, but even now in total sobriety it cracks me up, the earnestness of it, the ridiculousness of the scene, you couldn't invent him.
He hooked up with my friend Superfast about a year ago and she liked him enough to introduce him to the rest of the zoo. God bless Superfast and her amazing ability to pick the strangest boys as accessories. The last one couldn't really speak english at all, and maybe this was part of the charm because Superfast never shuts the fuck up. And the first one, meaning the guy she was with when I first met her, was a pure dodgy dealer from sunny seaside Bray, a man famous for shitty deals to his friends and for punching holes in the wall during emotional moments. Crazy J's Snakepit (on account of the snakes, and also on account of Crazy J) was where they lived, a pretty nice flat in Rathmines with no lock on the building's front door and the occasional junky infestation in the hall. Classy like.
But that was a long time ago and far, far away. Marius is a different bottle of gin altogether. He's a big calm rugged chiselled dude all full of enthusiasm for everything and an aura of honesty and good will. It's a good thing he's not in the army because he'd almost certainly spend his whole time jumping on grenades and the like in random and unnecessary acts of heroism.
Marius is also a nut, of course, Superfast likes them nutty.
If I have learned one thing in my several years of consciousness, and there's little evidence to show that I have, its that everyone is a few diamonds short of a heist and the entire world is populated by whacky loons. That said, whacky loonery is relative and theres always room for erratics straying from the standard deviation.
On a night full of stories, in a land far from home, the sun came up sometime after 6am and buses arrived to take us back to town. Marius has a great affection for Cherub, as we all do, and none of us really get to see Cherub too often as he lives in the wesht, in one of them sparsely populated counties that never win anything in the GAA. Anyway Marius, in a heightened state of totally fuckedness, managed to engineer the boarding so himself and his good friend Cherub got the two seats up beside the driver, much to the delight of said sober and early-rising driver .
It was so important that we all knew of this marvelous feat. Marius propped himself up with this elbows on the back of his seat and his sunburn and his matching Hawaiian shirt and shorts combo, panama hat and aviator shades, calling out "Hey we got the best seats, me and Cherub, we got the best seats". And we weren't laughing at him exactly, well we were, but in the friendly way you do when your friend is visiting baloobas-town and doesn't seem to know it. He took mild offence anyway, maybe just because we were not as impressed as he thought we would be at his seating genius, and his honest, plaintive polish-accented voice rose up as he placed his palm on his chest and said "I just have to say what is in my heart".
Jaysus, I nearly suffocated with the mirth.
It probably didn't help that I was full of strong drugs, but even now in total sobriety it cracks me up, the earnestness of it, the ridiculousness of the scene, you couldn't invent him.
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