[omfg]
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Tuesday, July 03, 2001
Sunday, June 17, 2001
(sound of crickets chirping) I'm sorry I haven't posted anything for a while. It's not that my life hasn't been interesting from when I got back from Ireland up until now - the reason there's nothing in my weblog is the same reason there's a pile of washing, dirty, clean, sentient, growing across the floor of my new bedroom in brunswick like a carpet of ivy. That reason is me.
I've had just about enough of people implying I should use my powers for good instead of evil. Or rather, for order instead of chaos. You've never heard a 'get a haircut and get a real job' quite like this before ... I was watching the John Travolta 'whitewash' documentary on the ABC tonight, muttering and grumbling about how one-sided and 'counter-investigative' it was. Now I'm half expecting next week's episode about the Rat Pack to portray them as choirboys and morally impeccable gentlemen. My whinging and bitching did not go unnoticed, and at the end of the show, the people I was with started wondering if it was John Travolta in Dirty Dancing (!). No, that was Partick Swayze, I pointed out, forgetting to be embarrassed for knowing such a thing, and for disclosing said knowledge.
I can't fucking remember what it was this person said, but it was along the lines of "Why don't you do something (ie employment) that utilizes your ability to retain useless crap?". The glass is obviously half empty tonight, and on such occasions clumsy words of encouragement such as these only serve to deepen the pessimism. Or something.
May I remind all visitors to this site to bugger off and read as many and as much of all of the following sites:
Sunday, April 22, 2001
Please forgive the fractured posting method - I still haven't forgiven Blogger for eating my epic piece on My Day With The Tiny Jellyfish, that is, The Day We Didn't Swim With Fungie. I don't sound bitter, do I?
After a relatively quick train trip from Tralee back to Dublin, Hannah and I made our way back to Sarah's flat in Phibsboro, an inner suburb of Dublin on the north side of the Liffey. Just around the corner from the An Oige, the principal IHA hostel in Dublin, actually. Sarah was out, but her new housemate, who we hadn't met, was there. Brendan was very kind to both reccomend and then drive us to a movie in a nearby suburban omniplex - and the drive out was very remeniscent of Melbourne roads, a cross between the South Eastern Arterial, whoops, the Monash Freeway and the Eastern Freeway. We saw Thirteen Days and both enjoyed it immensely. Then we were off for tea and a pint or two with John and Sarah. Not an unpleasant way to spend one's 26th birthday!
The next day we spent zipping around town like a couple of professional shopaholics - the decidedly unseasonal gift-giving hasn't finished yet so I won't disclose any details for now! Our last day in Dublin and Ireland, was frittered away between a late start, a drawn-out breakfast, and then more shopping! I managed to squeeze in a whirlwind tour of the Jamesons Distillery, and a more lingering stroll around the Guinness Storehouse. All too soon it was into the bus and onto the plane ... I'm starting to drop so I'll leave you to it for now.
Ahem yes now where was I. Dermott, the Irish backpacker we met in Dingle, pointed out a few things from the bus on the way from Dingle back to Tralee ... a number of ring forts, the remains of circular stone huts or buildings, from Ireland's prehistory, as well as some Faerie Trees, hawthorn bushes that the farmers dare not cut down or remove from their paddocks lest their hair fall out and their children all run away with the Travellers. The Travellers ... Ireland is so white, even their eth-a-nic minorities are the same colour! In a few sentences, the Travellers are an underclass of Irish folk that supposedly broke away from the majority of the population during the potato famines. There's a little more information here, and you can have a wander through Google's results here. Hannah saw a young dude riding a horse and buggy, and then another, like the kind you'd see at the trots, down a street in Clonmel where we were staying in Tipperary. Dermott's tales about wild Traveller brawls and fierce family feuding, not to mention the yarn about Travellers blocking off a busy highway to stage a high-stakes bareback horserace, astounded both Hannah and myself, and made us even more curious about these people. Perhaps we'll drop in on a camp next time we're over there ... or maybe not.
"It's good to be back, it's good to be back."
We arrived in Melbourne this morning at around twenty to five. Am still a little jetlagged, but at least the lump in my left calf muscle is gone ... it was probably just a blood clot on its way up to block a ventricle or something... that was just a joke mind you. We left Dingle a little reluctantly as there were a million other things to do there, as our friend Dermott pointed out, going to Dingle just to mess around in the harbour is like going to an art gallery and spending the whole time in the cafeteria. There are views from the peninsula Dingle's on (Innisfarne? the name eludes me) that are as good as or better than those from the Ring of Kerry - none of this is terribly important as we didn't really see either.
Looking back on the Fungie swimming experience, well, it was a bit of a fizzer, but seeing as the poor bugger's been entertaining locals for nearly fifteen years' straight, day in, day out for 365 days a year ... I reckon he's allowed a couple of impromptu sickies. If you think about it for a moment, there's almost a Monty Python sketch in there somewhere too ... an imaginary beurocracy between representatives of the dolphin world ... and human tourism operators.
Final tally on all the bits and pieces I left everywhere -- I left the cradle/recharger for my Palm Pilot in Northern Ireland, along with some CDs, an empty CD case, and a radio walkman. Not to worry though, because soon after this I left the Pilot itself in Glencolmkille -- luckily enough this was posted to where we were staying in Dublin the afternoon we were due to leave. Thankyou Helen ... that's Helen the knee-grabbing banana bender, currently c/- Donegal hostel. ... damn, mobile phone is ringing!
Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Cashel was closed to touristy types - not surprising really seeing as it was Easter Sunday. Dad I went to my first Catholic Easter Extravaganza -- went to the early mass though so I missed out on the singing and other stuff. Still for a quick mass though it was very interesting for someone that had only seen a Church of England one before. Don't think I'm quite won over yet, perhaps I'd be more into it if I'd been born one and all.
Arrived in Tralee last night and promptly left this morning at midday for Dingle. Hooray for Dingle and the town hero, Fungi the Dolphin! Well I'm not 100% sure he's a dolphin but I'll know in about 6 hours -- Hannah and I are off for a swim with the blighter, weather and cetacean temperment notwithstanding. The trip is drawing to an end now with three days to go. Not sure how I'm going to go about getting certain ceramic artefacts down from Northern Ireland -- more on that later. It's nearly three in the morning and I want to read some more theage.com.au ... what an eeediot!
A great many thanks again to Clan Ferris for putting up with us over the Easter period. I hope they enjoyed the choccies!
Sunday, April 15, 2001
I have just had a quick zap around for some more information on SNG. This site and this site should keep you pagan pundits happy. I'm just plain spooked now. Hannah had a terrible night's sleep after she overheard me discussing, among other things, the Qabbalah and the horror writings of H.P. Lovecraft. I had a terrible night's sleep, last night, Good Friday Night after arriving in Clonmel. And I'll tell you another thing for nothing, a while ago I couldn't get the image of square, rectangle, square, kind of like this, =[ ]=, where they're all level at the top, and all the same width, and the rectangle is twice the height of the square, out of my head, and then just now all of a sudden I see an image of the triple goddess, all standing side by side, each with that for their eye, nose, eye, if you get my meaning. I'm compelled to seek out this SNG at the Rock of Cashel now ... so I am!
Hannah and I are now in Clonmel, staying with Karen Ferris, ex-Virtual Communities. Have just had a peculiar conversation with the tenants of an apartment around the corner, who called me over to talk to them over the intercom/videophone. Showed them a few stupid faces, finger up nose etcetera. Am now at the town's internet cafe, Circles. Amazing joint, seriously, huge 19" monitors and PIII machines. Serious (Mob?) money behind this place I'm sure.
First things first though, I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath to find out if we made the Antibalas concert the other night in Galway. We did! Great craíc if you don't mind me saying so, so. We loitered out the front for a while, after having grovelled unsucessfully for tickets earlier that evening from the bar staff/management. Soon enough though a party asked us if we needed a ticket, and we snared one there, £5 thank you very much, which is less than we would have paid from the record shop earlier that evening. Soon after, a couple who only had one ticket between them flogged it to us, and headed home. We were overjoyed, although we waited until they had walked off before we started whooping and punching the air. Check out the site for more info on the band, but I had a fantastic chat with a local about all things prehistoric and religious. Incidentally did anyone see that Stile had incorrectly referred to an image (that same one, incidentally) of a Sheíla-na-gig as a MAN ... no wonder he's doubled over with a mysterious illness at the moment! According to "your man" at the bar, the expression the Irish use for 'that guy' or 'the man over there', the sheila-na-gig is also known as Brigit, not to be confused with St Bridgit I think, and was and remains the one pagan god/dess with whom you most definitely do not want to fuck with. Hence building churches around or over her images or statues instead of demolishing or removing them. Extremely bad juju, man. Better publish this before I drop my bundle.
Thursday, April 12, 2001
Site's working again - oh happy day. FTP addresses have changed but the site itself is still at ... well the site you're reading. They must have shuffled the deckchairs on the S S eisametro. I've changed the timezone for the log to GMT but I think I'll change it back so you all know when I'm writing. If anyone's on that MSN Messenger Service nonsense then we might be able to chat, coincidence permitting.
A bit of a disappointment hitting Galway -- we missed out on tickets to Antibalas by ten minutes. Antibalas? New York-based african tribal beat melange with extra boom-boom. There's more info at their official site. There were posters up around Dublin when we were there but we'd missed them by a few days ... and now this. Mum, you'll never guess how we missed out on tickets -- we were playing pinnies for about 20 minutes before it occurred to me to hunt down some presale tickets. Bummer. And other swear words. We dropped in on the venue and tried to grovel our way into the gig but I don't like our chances. It's 8pm now, it starts in an hour, and our only hope now is a scalper or someone piking. Life's tough for some innit?
Speaking of swear words -- Hannah and I spent the last few days in a fantastic hamlet called Glencolmkille - located in Co. Donegal, out on the western end ... among my personal highlights were the following: discovering the simple pleasures of the toasted sardine, cheese and onion sandwich (with crusts cut off for a change); my continuing origami rampage; leaving even more of my posessions behind (I left my palm pilot there. Whoops.); climbing the hills to the tower that overlooks the bay, and contributing to the international graffiti inside.
Swear words, yes. The Dooley Hostel at the Glen is run by a lovely older woman named Mary - she has a hairdo that looks like an electrocuted badger, and swears like a trooper - kinda like the old bastard in Father Ted, if anyone watches that show. Calls every new visitor to the hostel 'Ma Wee Beebies!" and weeps like a widow when they leave. Craic personified. Unreplacable. Living legend. And so on.
At the pub one night, a local fellow shaved his beard off for charity. 30 years worth of growth, that is. Then someone paid him extra to shave his head. Then Hannah bought an eyebrow for twenty quid. The rest is history.
Tuesday, April 10, 2001
Monday, April 09, 2001
Am at another of these wretched kiosks - rubber membrane keyboard, extortionate access rates: £1 / 10 minutes! This roughly translates to AUD$25 an hour. Slap me when I get back.
Have spent the past few days charming the locals across the north west of Ireland with various origami creations, Fi my fingers are getting warmed up! I decided to see how small a stellated dodecahedron I could make; you know, the thirty segment one. I cut two medium-sized sheets into 16ths, so each of these ended up being less than 1cm sq. Took the best part of an evening wrestling and coaxing them into shape.
A disturbingly high percentage of our snaps so far are deceased beasties -- some complete with coin for scale. There was a lovely rotting sheep carcass on the beach yesterday.
We are in GlenColmCille at the moment. Last night at the pub was magnificent - locals belting out local tunes and dirges. One woman sang a haunting song about a wife wondering whether her husband is safe working on a whaling ship. First time I'd ever felt sad for a whaler! Regret to inform family that I could not think of an entire song to sing save "Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree" and "Play School". May have to monitor stout intake. This morning the words to "I Hold Your Hand In Mine"(Lehrer) came to mind. 6 minutes left. Glen'Cille is lovely. Want to build geodesic houses here. Love to all.
Thursday, April 05, 2001
Am writing from a kiosk in Dongal -- We're back over the border after about a week or so in NI. Limited luck researching Hannah's roots but it was fun to bum around in Omagh and Dromore nonetheless. Will write more when I find a keyboard that doesn't Suck(tm).
Monday, April 02, 2001
I forgot to ask, were there any good April 1 pranks there yesterday? Can someone save me a copy of The Age -- there are usually a few good ones amongst the ads and so on. Shit, it's nearly lunchtime. We could have used gas masks in the coffee shop this morning: there were that many people smoking that you could see the smoke rush out when someone opened the door to come in. Smokers unite - the promised land is found - it's called Northern Ireland and you can have it, pally :cD
An interesting difference here - the pinnies and the pokies are tarred with the same brush and lumped into the same room. Anyone under the age of 18 is not permitted! If only you'd moved to Northern Ireland instead of Coburg, mum, I might have never fallen prey to that childrens narcotic!
Hi guys! We were going to go here, but we forgot. Might do on the way back. Went to the Europa though -- and took obligatory 'let's blow the fucker up!' photos. Went to the 'peace' wall in Belfast ... it's taller than the Berlin Wall, something the locals are apparently curiously proud of. That's because they weren't throwing molotovs and rocks over the top in Berlin, you nutters. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, we had something of an internet café drought between now and the last post. How did travellers cope before web access was so prolific? I've learned not to call myself a traveller actually, over here the term refers to vagrants or what I'm calling 'new gypsies'. Nothing new about them, apparently. I can see Hannah through the window in front of me -- she's running around with the library staff doing the family history thing, and is having a whale of a time from the looks of things. And where are my manners? It's update time!
We are still in Northern Ireland. I have yet to be pulled up for swanning around the place in mustard-brown woolen pants, something that drove me almost to the point of relapse on the Black Cab tour. The feicer running the tour indulged in all manner of grisly sectarian tales, not to mention the ugly things loyalist factions are doing to each other. Humerous bleak observation of the morning was the fact that apparently in the past 6 months, internal conflict has done more damage (in the terms of deaths and injuries) to the loyalists than the IRA did in the last thirty years, that is, the whole length of the Troubles.
Scoop - Hannah's hit paydirt on the genealogical front. We've got names, maps, the whole box and dice. I'll keep youse all posted. I love youse, I love youse all! Fiona, I'm going to try to add alexwebb@eisa.net.au (if it's still working!) to this website, so you'll be able to write back and let us know what's going on over there! I was glad to see Steve (Jeff) Bracks cop another cream pie at the Comedy Festival -- dopey git.
Last night was absolutely f*$king freezing. We stayed at a little hostel outside Omagh, and seeing as we were the only people there, and the hostel owners actually live next door, it was a little lonely and gloomy. What made this worse was that we had just come down from the hostel at Down Hill, on the northern coast near the Giant's Causeway. You'll all have to smack me when I get home, but we didn't make it up to the Causeway Coast, prevailling circumstances (not the Foot and Mouth problem, however) prevented us from getting up there. The Down Hill hostel was absolutely fantastic; the owners there, a young married couple, live in the hostel, and it is furnished with their posessions. You feel like you're staying with friends or relatives - and William and McCall both went out of their way to make us feel welcome. They had a couple of rooms in the house to themselves but they cooked in the same space. McCall has a small pottery workshop in a room separate from the hostel, and took her first commercial run of cups, bowls, teapots and the like to the local market on the weekend. She's making me a couple of Go bowls - we're heading back up there to pick them up and some other bits and pieces that I left behind in a few weeks.
Tuesday, March 27, 2001
Last night was a top night out in Belfast. Full stop. I broke the golden rule of not trying to keep up with the locals, and as a consequence I think I still have a BAC of about .06 , but who's counting? Managed to have a half decent conversation with a fellow saying his name's Sean, but the Bullshit Detector told me he may have been having me on. Witnessed the barmen get more and more agitated as the folks up the back dropped more and more glasses, perhaps deliberately. Left Hannah and Emily to talk with the other backpackers from the hostel while I tried to stop Sean from getting thumped by Jeff sitting to my right. I'm not making much sense and I think it's time I went and ate before the Black Cab Tour starts ... it's 1031h here but who's counting?
Monday, March 26, 2001
Well we didn't get the distilleries and stuff in unfortunately, but we've been having plenty of fun otherwise. Yesterday was our first trip out of Dublin, up into county Wicklow, to see the town where they shoot 'Ballykissangel', Avoca - not my idea, but a fun afternoon out anyway. It's especially convenient to have a local (well, a Dubliner) to drive us around in his giant Chrysler 4WD, at least until he's got a few pints under his belt. Then it's convenient to have Sarah to drive us back *grin*. On the way over we drove through the Dublin mountains ... and at a 'stop and feel the sod' stop, where we had a short geological discussion on how sod is actually formed, a few paces off the road into the heather we found the skull, spine, and one hind leg of a stray dog that had been picked clean by, well, other dogs I suppose. Pseudo-forensic photos by Hannah when we get the first roll developed. Incidentally, the other leg was a few yards away, but they hadn't eaten the foot - maybe he'd stepped in dogshit (boom boom). We stopped at Enniskerry, where two rivers 'what names I can't remember' merge. My stone-skipping is a little rusty but I managed to get a couple all the way across the river, and, more importantly, when the others were looking! It's a pity there's so much litter around the place here -- a 'growing pain' of Ireland I imagine.
Today we visited the Kilmainham Gaol, prison for a great many of Ireland's political prisoners since it was built at the end of the 17th century. We stood in the wing where some prison scenes from 'In The Name of the Father' were shot, and then in the stonebreaker's yard, where the Easter Rising's leaders where shot, including the poor bastard who was already dying. The Red Cross hospital drove him from their base in Dublin to the prison on the day of his execution, where he was shot sitting down just inside the gate. A particularly moving experience -- as was the AV presentation in the prison chapel where that other bloke was married, minutes before he was executed. You'll forgive me for not remembering the particulars, it must be the Scot in me, if there is any, (and definitely the Scot in Hannah!) that's keeping an eye on the clock and the 'meter' here at the internet café.
Tomorrow the trip proper should start -- we're looking at a paddywagon tour up through N. Ireland, pestilential plagues and protracted partisan pugilism notwithstanding. Giant's Causeway etc here we come. We are exeptionally greatful for Sarah's hospitality, her rented house is literally around the corner from the Dublin youth hostel, and she's saved us a good IR£20 in board so far! It's Mother's Day here today -- so Happy Mother's Day mum, and happy Mother's Day Fiona! She's stand-in ratty mum for Hannah's two girls while we're away *grin*.
Saturday, March 24, 2001
Howdy folks ... so far the trip to Ireland has been a trip to Dublin, as we're spending the first week here to find our feet and catch up with friends and family who are already here.
Friends is Karen, ex Virtual Communities, who shouted Hannah and I to a very swank corporate canteen lunch at the Bank of Ireland yesterday, and family is Sarah, Hannah's sister who's spending a few months working here at one of the hospitals. Sarah came to see us at the airport when we touched down ... thank christ! We were both extremely jetlagged, hannah having slept the last leg from Heathrow to Dublin.
That flight was a bit of a shock to me, after being in the 747, that great greyhound bus of the skies, as we were in an A300 and the pilot must have been making up for lost time. After 15 minutes of taxiing it was chocks away and we went from a dead stop to 30,000ft in about 5 minutes flat ... maybe he left the stove on. Another friend we hope to catch up with is Emily from Melbourne who I know through the Blues Brothers 'clique'.
So far this week we've seen the municipal art gallery, been to a few pubs -- I coerced Hannah into a game of cribbage at one pub yesterday, I still think there's a demon crib player somewhere in there, she just doesn't know it yet! Today was the Book of Kells, and didn't I have a hard time restraining myself from buying the whole thing on CDROM ... only £19.84 ... ooh ... spooky..!
Hopefully today we'll get in the Guiness distillery, as well as the Jamesons distillery, to be sure!
I want to write more and mention you all by name and all that ... but unfortunately here at the Global Internet Cafe, O'Connell St, Dublin, time is money, £1.20 per quarter hour as it happens. I'm supposed to be posting to my weblog ... the address is
http://members.eisa.net.au/~alexwebb/omfg/
and I'm just going to paste this in now!
Love to you all,
Alex
