Severe Jam Damage

Hey you kids, get offa my lawn!!!

To some it was a mistake.
To others it was a miracle.

Me, I didn’t really care one way or the other. According to the papers it appeared I was the only one apathetic towards the whole thing.

Well, it didn’t affect me really. Not at all. It didn’t affect most of the denizens of the city either but the whole freedom of speech thing had them thinking that they couldn’t just sit back and say nothing, their rights had been granted and by god, they were going to make use of them.

So the debates and the growing undercurrent of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ grew throughout the city. It started off as a sort of joke. Newspapers vying for sales, building each side up on alternating days. Interviewing those with radical views, inciting fear and loathing in the general populace.

Media had gotten very good at that type of thing. They’d had so much practice, first with the towers and then with Iraq. Providing less of an objective standpoint, they’d become soothsayers, charlatans, mouthpieces for the corrupt few in power.

The worst thing that could have happened to them came to pass.

‘Peace in our time.’

Who would have thought it. Certainly not I. The veterans, those from Iraq, Korea (the third time) and the later war of Patagonia felt vindicated but confused. How could it have been so simple? They grieved for lost limbs, senses, friends.

The rest of us went about our day to day life. Blissful, unaware, same as it ever was.

The Coming was the biggest thing to hit the city since Peace had fallen like a dark blanket over us. It was a new start, a new chance. Things would change now.

You see, Peace wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It wasn’t all daisies and buttercups. Humanity needed conflict. The Coming was the perfect thing to begin a new conflict.

Who’d have thought a golden milk cow could cause so much trouble?

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This half assed attempt was more of an exercise in ramping up for Nano than a proper Flicktion. Oh dearie, dearie me. From flickr pictureKing Kow by Flickr user isolano. Not sure who else is in this week but check out the usual suspects: The Gurrier, Chris, Linus, Tadmack, TeaandCakes, LittleGoat and Aquafortis.

By Eli, age 33 and 51/52ths.

Today is Wednesday. It is pissing down with rain. I am eating chocolate covered toffee popcorn. I like it. It is yummy. At lunch today I ate Chicken Kiev. There was lots of butter on the chicken. I might have a heart attack later. I also had some potatoes. They were burnt. The chef tried to hide this fact by seasoning them with cumin and onions. They were not nice. Silly chef!

I am wearing a cardigan. It is a black cardigan. It is not very warm. I am sitting beside the window. I am cold. There is no heat in the office. I have to go to the pub tonight. I will probably get drunk. It is fun sometimes. Do you like to get drunk? This is my report for today, which is Wednesday.

There is an elf sitting on the bus ahead of me. I’m surprised - a little. I don’t know why, I guess I always knew there had to be elves somewhere. All of those stories have to have some kernel of truth right? So the fact that one of them is sitting on the bus seems perfectly reasonable. It’s like the old saying ‘Where ever you go there you are.’

Makes sense that elves have to be places too. Although obviously they aren’t in too much of a hurry if they are taking public transport.

The elf turns his head slightly to look out the window. In profile he has a bigger nose than I’d expected - not so much Grecian as Grecian urn. It looks like it’s been broken before, again not so much a surprise with an elf. If I was a few hundred years old I’d probably have suffered a few broken bones as well. The bus is fairly packed, there’s a troll driving and he’s an angry fucker.

‘Moo-wev to de back!’ he shouts, packing another 3 or 4 passengers into the crush. A couple of monkeys are swinging from the ceiling and down in the back seat some Yanqui dogs are not-so-secretly smoking. Clouds of smoke waft up the bus adding to the animal smell of musk and sweat and piss.

Either public transport has relaxed it’s standards or I really need to come down fast.

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This hallucinogenic bit of prose inspired by my hangover and Something weird… by Flickr user bernardo.borghetti. Not sure who else is in this week but check out the usual suspects: The Gurrier, Chris, Linus, Tadmack, TeaandCakes, LittleGoat and Aquafortis.

As some of you may know I spent (some of) my formative years in a small town in Nova Scotia. Well actually we lived in a township -which I think is the only way to put it - called Falmouth. This place was so small that our entire address was:
The family name
Falmouth
RR2 (RR standing for ‘rural route’)

Windsor was the ‘big town’ next door and my, wasn’t it the epitome of style and sophistication. It had a Sobeys! It had a Co-Op! It even had a drive-in A&W!

And now ladies and gents it has The Pumpkin Regatta. In which grown men (and women) carve out pumpkins and try to make their way across Lake Pesaquid.

Holy shit! (sorry got side-tracked there.) I’ve found an article in the Chronicle Herald (Halifax newspaper) about it and it mentions a fella I used to go to school with. Now that’s a blast from the past.

Anyway, sorry where was I? Oh yes, the Pumpkin Regatta. It’s only been running for 7 years so I’ve never seen the damn thing. I blame it all on that Howard Dill fella. I remember when he was winning ‘huge punkin’ contests all over the place. It got so you couldn’t go anywhere: The Dairy Treat, the Met, even Ed’s (the local shop) without seeing that photo of Howie with his three grandkids sitting inside his huge pumpkin.

*photo from http://www.worldsbiggestpumpkins.com/

That’s us, crawling through clouds of dry ice and strobe. The tangy burnt smell of it fills my mouth and I cough. Somewhere on the dancefloor the boys are lost in their own worlds.

The heavy bass beat vibrates through my boots. With my head pressed against the stacked sub-woofers I can feel the gust that the music makes on my face, in my hair. The slight current is a blessing in this cramped and sweaty place.

Another blast of dry ice.

Someone grabs my hand.
‘C’mon’ the voice deep, lips close to my ear. I can smell pizza on his breath, I know it’s one of ours. A flash of black jeans, white skinny arms.
‘Tom!’
I follow into the maelstrom.
‘Higher than the Sun’. The Dub Symphony mix.

We’re moshing now, crushed against one another. I’m vaguely aware of other bodies surrounding me, but the rhythms’ got me. The music swells and I twist in the crush. I am the hub of the medicine wheel.

Brief flashes of arms, faces, elbows. Hands grab my waist, wrap round me and Rachel is there. Shelli not far behind. The boys open the circle, we three hang against each other for support. Again the circle closes and we are protected.

We think things will always be like this.

But that was 16 years ago. Tonight I listen to the music again. Everything has changed. If I close my eyes I can remember it all.
‘Higher than the Sun’ on my ipod.

And thoughts of Mark, Matt, Charles, Rick, Tommy, Ian and Chad.

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Inspired by Into the Fog by Flickr user sevres-babylone. Not sure who else is in this week but check out the usual suspects: The Gurrier, Chris, Linus, Tadmack, TeaandCakes, LittleGoat and Aquafortis.

I’m still here, sort of.

Been busy with work and well, work. We’re supposed to be releasing so my days are filled with meetings, builds and escalating bug counts. (If none of this makes sense to you then you’re lucky don’t worry. It probably means you HAVE a life.) Also about 60% of my usual interweb haunts are blocked so I have to be very choosy about where I login, otherwise I get flashing screens and sirens and messages that ‘THIS SITE CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT’ or ‘HERE THERE BE DRAGONS’ or ‘WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE BITCH’ all signed with Love from the IT dept.

Anyway in addition to working weekends and pretty much all the hours God is sending I’ve also:
- Tried to get broadband at home. (Fingers crossed eircom will sort me out. NTL don’t cover our area, bastards.)
- Signed up for NanoWrimo again this year. Considering I haven’t been able to do anything for the last two weeks with Flickr Fiction there’s likelihood I won’t finish this year. (Why do I do this to myself? Not only have I signed up but I volunteered to be the Co - ML for Dublin again. Simply for the natty luminous yellow T-shirt I hear some of you say.)
- Due to new work stuff I currently have at least 3 invitations to Christmas parties that I can think of off the top of my head. This does not include assorted birthdays, going away do’s and random pintage \ movies.

Hmm, it doesn’t seem that much written down, but the work thing seems to be sucking the life force out of the other stuff, so lately I feel like I’m not getting much done.

oh jesus, oh jesus, oh jesus.

It’s that time of year again and I am once more without inspiration.

NaNoWriMo

Apparently a few of the lads from the ‘k-club have found my little corner of the interweb. Somebody mentioned it on Saturday night and as the drink flowed more and more of them asked me
‘Whats all this about you writing a blog then?’

So now they know and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

On the one hand I have a bunch of friends who are aware of my presence on the ‘net. Some of them are fellow bloggers \ writers themselves and some aren’t. My family also knows about my ‘not so secret life’ and my sister and brother in law keep vague tabs on me here.

So I’m used to meeting up with people and talking about online stuff, etc. But the ‘k-club lads (as I have coined our ex-company) are former workmates. Which kind of makes it a whole different ball-game - I’ve already blogged about how I prefer to keep my work and personal life separate.

Then again I’ve known them all going on for seven years or so. Every Christmas we do a ‘12 pubs of’ crawl – even the years when I wasn’t working there. People gave up a Saturday night to eat and drink with former workmates, the lads go golfing together, former employees still keep in touch. How many companies do you know where that happens? Christ, even C-Bear is a former employee - and oh the amount of confusion that friendship caused when we first became friends.
‘But the two of you are so different, how on earth can you be friends?’
I used to refer to us as ‘Uma and Janeane’.
Guess who I was.

Anyway, I’m waffling now. If any of the ‘k-club are reading this I guess this is the bit where I say:
‘Hello Boys.’

Saturday night I was out with ex-coworkers in a last blast to the company. Also we had a bit of cash in the social club coffers so used it up on food and drink in Diep le Shaker. A few of us met up in the Pembroke beforehand and the rest waited in the bar of the restaurant where they ordered cocktails.

The organizer had booked us in for the ‘Taste of Phuket’ menu which involved a buffet of somewhere upwards of 10 dishes. The restaurant is small and intimate although our seating arrangements weren’t terribly good. One large round table (8 top) shoved together with a smaller round 4-top does not make for much room for 15 guests – especially those unlucky enough to be seated in the odd curved space between the two. In addition the tables were at the back of the room beside the kitchen. At times I thought that a few on the other side of the table were going to end up with a plate of crispy duck all over their heads.

The service was fine although perhaps a little too attentive as the waiter was around every five minutes to refresh our glasses. All well and good except that the second bottle of Shiraz appeared to have some horrible tangy aftertaste that the first bottle did not, but it was too late to save anything as the waiter had already topped up our glasses with the second bottle. If it had been a smaller group I would have asked for fresh glasses. Also we never did figure out what accent the Maitre’D was trying to imitate.

The food itself was good, although with ten-plus dishes it was hard to tell which might be your favourite. There was simply too much choice. Crispy fried duck with plum sauce and pancakes, chicken, beef and prawn satay. Spring rolls, fish goujons and Chicken Pandan - cubes of chicken baked in lime leaves (‘Don’t eat the leaves’ warned our waiter.) The main course was even more meat-laden. Roast duck with pineapples and plum sauce. A hot and spicy prawn and scallop curry that snuck up on those who dared to try it. ‘Sure that’s not so bad’ was heard a couple of times and five minutes later there were gasps for water. The always popular green chicken curry, a beef curry of some sort, a spicy vegetable thing, another seafood curry with mussels and prawns, and a yellow prawn curry. Served with noodles and rice (steamed or fried.)

A third course of crispy banana fritters served with ice cream –which many had to chase around the plate - and a coffee finished the meal. Our booking was for 7pm and we were supposed to be out of there by nine for the second seating, but the staff let us finish off our meal and stagger wearily away at about 9.30.

Kudos to them for putting up with us.