Severe Jam Damage

Happy Hannukah! Merry Kwanzaa! Season’s Greetings! Happy Yuletide, etc.

This blog is closed till about the 3rd of January. See you next year.

It’s lovely to meet friends for lunch at Christmas time.

It’s even lovelier to have a couple glasses of wine while you’re meeting them.

It’s not so lovely to have to come back into the office, pretend to be sober and hang around till 5 o’clock though.

The Nosepicking Lesbo Nun:

It’s the Christmas season, so of course my life is a current whirl of parties, soirees and drunken debauched dishco’s. As such I’ve been staying at my parents house more often than not lately, because it’s quite hard to convince a taxi to drive me back home to Walton’s mountain at around 3 in the morning. Due to this, I am (un)happily resigned to taking the 7b into work the next morning, which is (on the positive side) an Express bus, but (on the negative side) means that I am exposed to the ghastliness of the common or garden variety of commuter. In particular I am talking about the Nosepicking Lesbo Nun. Or NLN as she shall be known henceforth.

NLN doesn’t get onto the bus until the Baker’s Corner stop and for some unknown reason she always, always sits beside me. Is it my perfume? My long lustrous hair? Or the way I might look at ye of an early morning? (With great rage and hatred mostly.) I don’t know to be honest. But I do not that the NLN, like a heat seeking missile always manages to track me down and squash her oversized ass into the seat beside me on the bus. Recently I was laden down with a suitcase on my morning commute so sat at the back of the bus in one of the ’special’ seats. I thought perhaps she would ignore me, or not see me, or anything really. But alas, no. She sought me out and then proceeded to pretty much sit on me. Me, there with my suitcase squashed up under my feet and she leaning against me like I’m an old lamp post.

We never speak. The unwritten rule of commuting is that you must never speak to your seat mate. Not that I particularly want to anyway. So, you are probably asking yourself how do I know she’s a nosepicking lesbo nun if we’ve never exchanged so much as a word?

NosePicker
Well I can see her picking her nose, the entire trip (or most of the entire trip, see below.) It is really quite disgusting to see a 50 something year old woman with her index finger shoved up into her brain. It’s disgusting to see anyone doing it to be honest but to have to sit beside them for 45 minutes while they scavenge and poke around up there, just turns my stomach.

Nun
I don’t honestly know if she’s a nun but I’ve had some clues. When she’s not foraging in her nasal cavity she’s got her rosary beads out. Recently I had the (dis)pleasure of having her sit behind me droning on and on all the way into town as her beads clacked together. Also another time she dug around in her tardis like satchel for some official looking letters from the Holy Sisters of the Consecrated Wine Glass or somesuch. Maybe she’s applying to the convent and all this praying and bead clacking is just the way you practise to be a nun. I’ve no idea.

Lesbo
This is perhaps my most unfounded accusation. I have no proof of her sexual proclivities other than the fact that every day she sits beside me and then when I am getting off the bus, instead of standing up to let me out of the seat she simply swings her legs out a little bit so that I am forced to squeeze past her. I don’t know if she’s looking at my ass or not. I don’t really want to think about it.

Ahh, well. Pretty soon the silly season will all be over and I’ll be back staying in Walton’s mountain, poorer than a churchmouse and unable to go to any social occasions so I won’t have to deal with NLN in the mornings. Frankly, I’m worried that I might miss the old bag.

Christmas Train Ruck:

It should be noted before reading this that Iron Rod Erin in some sort of idiot savant move have decided it makes much more sense to run the only commuter train from Gorey as a 4 carriage train for the week running up to Christmas. This means that when I get on at Walton’s mountain I manage to get one of the last seats on the train, while the poor bastards in Wicklow have to fight it out. Observe:

At Wicklow this fella gets on and starts to sit down, some potatohead tries to sit in the same seat. By that I mean he actually tries to sit down first, so that they are grappling and pushing at each other and suddenly I feel that I am watching uncut footage from Oz. The first fella gets the seat and immediately the potato head starts shouting at him
‘She was saving that seat for me!’ Pointing to the woman who has already seated herself by the window.
Seated Bloke: I’m sitting here now. She didn’t say anything to me about it being saved.
Potatohead: Fuck off, you ignorant old bollix!
Seated Bloke: I’m not standing all the way to Dublin
Potatohead: you can sit in the fuckin’ john! {and then he tromps off down to the end of the carriage.
Seated Bloke: {says something to the woman across the aisle from him that I didn’t catch}
Woman: Sure, I know! He’s dead rude! He pushed me out of the way already!
Potatohead comes back and then leans across yer man for the rest of the way to Bray
Potatohead: Sure and I might as well stand up here and talk to yis ha? Sure and he’s only an ol’ bollix, taking the seat like that, wha?
Girl in seat beside me shakes her head and rolls her eyes.
Voice from seat behind: Oh fer chrissake, shut the fuck up, it’s 7 in the morning, some of us are trying to sleep! (Okay the voice was me.)

Then the weird thing (or rather WEIRDER thing) he proceeds to completely ignore the woman who supposedly saved his seat and stands talking to the woman across from her for the entire trip.

…and has been since 3 o’clock.

Why is drinking in work like drinking while flying? My face is all flushed and my eyes are feeling all swollen.

Also, Rolling Rock is muck.

Last week before Christmas and the state of play is thus:

Liver Damage
Minimal, surpisingly - I survived the 12 pubs crawl this year. But that’s mainly because I only went to 5 of them. Small crew this year, averaged about 11 or 12 in each pub as people kept coming and going. Been doing well on the Christmas party front also. There would appear to be loads of people around town willing to join me and my bendy arm for a drink or two. More shenanigans scheduled for this week, thank god work is quiet.

Shopping
Have sent out all the Christmas cards, so if you didn’t get one it means either An Post is crap (no surprise there) or I didn’t have your postal address. Alternately you could be some random interweb surfer in which case you definitely aren’t getting a card.
Also managed to get into town for 10 o’clock on Saturday morning and bought all my presents without having to commit genocide, well all bar my Mothers gift. I’m stumped on that one at the moment.

Top tip for christmas shopping: If like me you leave everything till the last minute you will not have the leisure of ‘browsing’ for gifts. So do what I do, go out and buy SOMETHING. It can be anything but once you break the seal on yer credit card the world is your bivalve. I tend to start with wrapping paper. Who cares if you don’t actually have anything to wrap yet. Soon you will be weighted down with shopping, grumbling like a very grumbly thing and kicking the dawdlers out of your way. (Other top tip, wear big boots.)

Quotable Quotes:
‘There is no such thing as Christmas Spirit when it comes to Christmas Shopping, it’s all elbows and anger.’
-Me, on being asked by my father why I was in a bad mood on Saturday morning.

Personal
I haven’t had time to get my hair cut for Christmas this year, so instead I dyed it. Er, this colour:

Port watch
Continues. New entries this week are the Lord Ed, the Clarendon and the Foggy Dew.
Lord Ed - Proper Glass, lemon with cloves, sugar and a spoon. Port was nice and hot.
Clarendon - Regular glass, lemon, no cloves, sugar brought to table. Port was warm, as if they’d thrown a couple of ice cubes into the hot water.
Foggy Dew - Proper glass, lemon with cloves, sugar. Port was warm and a paper napkin was wrapped around glass to ease manouverability.

So the current leaderboard is as follows:
1. Keogh’s of Sth Anne St
2. Lord Ed on Castle St.
3. Foggy Dew
4. Library Bar on Exchequer St.
5. Neary’s of Chatham St.
6. Stag’s Head
7. Clarendon’s
8. Madigan’s of donnybrook

So all in all I’m pretty much ready for the Christmas onslaught. Pretty good, considering last week I had nothing done.

Have the kids in your neighbourhood been breaking the windows of your home with their rassafrassin’ ball games this year? Teach ‘em a lesson this Christmas.

How to traumatise a child for life.

CONTAINS MOVIE SPOILERS.
I suppose if we hadn’t been spoiled with LOTR for three years running most people would consider Narnia to be one of the better movies they’d seen in an age. As the Barfly muttered into his beer last night we do seem to be in a Golden Age of movies again. The kind of epics that need to be seen on the big screen to get the full effect; King Kong, Narnia, Flightplan… Er, forget that last one.
So while it is a good movie, it’s not what could be called a great movie.
I liked Lucy, I thought Aslan looked great, I even- god help me- liked Tumnus somewhat (although it should be noted that Tumnus is a fawn and NOT a satyr, the difference being er, the length of the horns and the uh, type of tail.) But what I couldn’t get over was the lack of blood in the movie.
Peter kills Maugrim.
No blood.
Edmund gets speared.
No blood.
Aslan dies (yeah, sorry kids, he does.)
No blood.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there a big deal made in the book about Aslan’s blood being spilled on the Stone Table which is what causes the damn thing to crack? I also seem to remember a section of prose which talks about Lucy untying the ropes that had cut into Aslan’s muzzle and wiping away the dried blood from around his mouth.
LOTR had the same ‘12′ rating and yet there was much more blood and gore, although, saying that I did feel there were certain scenes in Narnia that had been cut for or by the censor. Something for the DVD perhaps?

Yes, I know it’s a kids story, most people I know first read Narnia when they were about 7 or 8. But if I could read about and imagine a dead, de-maned Lion covered in blood at that age why then, can’t I see even a fraction of that imagining at the age of thirty-mumble? Not that I want to come across as some sort of bloody thirsty gore freak, but a little bit of realism would have been nice in a magical world. Surely with a budget of over 200 million dollars Adamson could have set aside a couple thou for a few bottles of ketchup? Although I see now it was a Walt Disney production. Nuff said, the Mouse is not for bleeding.

Ad for Vodaphone, spotted in the loo of the Long Stone:

Girls!
What does your boyfriend want for Christmas?
a.) A monkey
b.) The coolest jizziest 3g phone now with extra wankology, blah, blah, etc.
c.) A maid

If the answer is B then you are in luck! Vodaphone has…

Ok, you get the picture. Now I don’t have a boyfriend but as I’m reading this ad all I can think is that most of the guys I know would prefer a monkey butler for Christmas, failing that they’d probably settle for a monkey maid.

Once again the overpaid, over-hyped marketeers get it so, so wrong.

Went down to the Christmas Market with the Barfly and the Goth last night. It would appear that the Gurrier has his spies everywhere, although I would have thought that the IFSC was the last place they’d follow me.

We could hear a carousel spouting out a disordant melody so that we shuddered at the gates of the market, wondering if we’d end up the protagonists in an Unexpected Tale. Should we turn back, go and get a pint in Mulligans, or would we brave the leering carny man? Myself and the Barfly were still dithering when the decision was taken forcefully from our hands. The Goth ran interference for us, leather coat flapping in the wind, screaming like a banshee, causing the carny man to cower in his canvas tent. We passed the empty spinning carousel, a depressing sight and headed for the warmth of the building. Inside it appeared that the NCAD kids had recreated the set of The Ring, to what purpose I have no idea. The stop-motion girl on the wall was giving me the shivers but I watched her, unable to turn away in case she crept out of the screen while my back was turned. The Barfly and the Goth were busy playing with the dolls house.
‘Look at the ickle pair of PVC trousers on the bed!’ said the Barfly.
‘And the ickle vinyl records!’ said the Goth.
‘G’way yis pair of pansies’ said I.
Outside our fingers and toes grew numb, the Goth was sniffling into his hankie.
‘It’s sooo bloody cold’ he moaned. A couple of angels pushed past us, feathers tickling our faces, they clutched cups of warm goodness to themselves. Obviously the citizens of the Silver City aren’t averse to a wee dram or two. The Barfly was broke and there was no point asking the Goth, so it was up to me to stump up for three mugs of mullered wine. Not bad to be honest, sweeter than the Glühwein I was drinking in Tallinn a week ago. We wandered among the stalls, clutching our wine aware that the traders were carefully avoiding our eyes. I was pacing the boards, trying to keep warm when I realised the Barfly had gotten lost among the fairy dresses, delighting in the tulle confections.
‘Another girlhood dream fulfilled’ quoth the Goth, who really shouldn’t have been saying anything at all, as he’d become entranced by the sparkly jewellery for so long that we’d had to forcibly restrain him and direct his attention to a vintage cigarette box.
‘C’mon’ I said, growing bored and irritable. ‘Time for proper pints.’
The Barfly shivered, the Goth sneezed and I strode on; my path clear, my destination sure.