Severe Jam Damage

T - 7
One week to All Hallows Eve, have you gotten your jack-o-lantern carved yet??
Warning Very NSFW.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/fbe6c2faa0/jack-chop

Yes, I’m still here, have a couple of things going on at the moment, so not much time to blog - hopefully things will calm down soon and I’ll be around here a bit more.

For those of you still reading this check out Alligator Pie, my sisters new blog. Its really quite witty.

I’ve recently gotten involved in a photography group based in Dublin called FlickrFatale - we all met on Flickr and -tired of lagging behind with our cameras when out for Sunday walks with non-photoheads - decided to meet up every so often for photo outings and the like. We’ve now arranged our first exhibition which takes place in Ballyroan Library from July 30th to August 31st.

We’re all very excited as this is the first (of hopefully many) exhibitions we’re planning around Dublin. If you want to see more of the groups work check out our website, blog or flickr group page:

www.flickrfatale.com
flickrfatale.blogspot.com/
FlickrFatale Group

Went to Copenhagen for a few days last week. Its a nice city, although I didn’t take as many pictures as I normally would - or rather I wasn’t very happy with a lot of the ones I did take so just a small set on flickr.

I’ve a couple of rolls of film to get developed as well on the fisheye so hopefully there’ll be something worthwhile there. Copenhagen is a nice compact city much like Dublin. Easy to walk around and safe enough for the most part. Went out to Christiania one afternoon but no pics of the experience as the place was littered with No Camera signs.

Some cities are more conducive to photo taking then others, I don’t know if it was the atmosphere or my own mood. Although I took the cameras with me I didn’t feel like using them that much, happier just to soak up the atmosphere and remember what its like to just wander a city and breathe it in. Perhaps I just needed to see with my own eyes rather than through a lens.

A few things I can’t get enough of right now…

1. Fever Ray - If I had a heart
Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson (lead vocalist with ‘The Knife’) has a new project called Fever Ray. If you haven’t already get thyself to itunes.

If I Had A Heart from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

2. M83 - Kim & Jessie \ Skin of the Night
I’ve already mentioned that listening to ‘Kim & Jessie’ is like wrapping yourself up in a John Hughes movie - by contrast ‘Skin of the Night’ tears the comforter away and leaves you bare. No official video for ‘Skin’ so here’s a live version - all 7 glorious minutes of it.

3. Zoë Keating - One Cello x 16
Formerly second chair in Rasputina, currently featured on Amanda Palmers solo album ‘Who Killed Amanda Palmer’ - Keating takes one cello, one macbook and makes an orchestra. Here’s ‘Tetrishead’ for a sampler.

4. The Presets - If I Know You
Simply sublime video and song.

The Presets - If I Know You from Modular France on Vimeo.

They scrobbled me in the park the bastards - and then tried to kill me in the mountains.

We went for a walk on Saturday after a night on the beer (or in my case rum, whisk(e)y and champagne.)

On the map above you can see where the planned route runs - basically around the top of the mountain to the JB Malone memorial, a peek down at Lough Tay and then close the loop back to the car park.

EXCEPT that somewhere along the way a detour was taken, and then another detour - and our ‘gentle 2 hour stroll’ turned into a tromp all over Ballinasloe.

I still think it was a trap and if we’d followed the Coillte detour right to the end we’d have ended up in some hillman’s cooking pot.

Map Legend:
Black path - correct path we should have taken
Red path - our detour(s) and backtracking
Blue path - briefly lost the Gurrier when he legged it into the woods
Lego Cop and mini - the slowest cop chase ever witnessed, even slower than OJ.
Skull and Bones - destroyed forest land aka ‘Coillte was here, ok?’ aka ‘Mordor’

I can’t see any of the Capuchin Friars from Church st doing this…

Make me a Hero. I love the flamethrower, the outfit and the patch. But I’m really not sure about that name as a Superhero or rather in my case SuperVillian. Given that I’m off to see Watchmen this afternoon, I thought it a rather timely post.

Besides the whole ‘work’ issue the other reason things have been quiet around here is because I’ve been working on a couple of other blogs.

Elimare is where SJD originally started - I switched over to blogsome because the blogger editor wasn’t very good. Anyway, that was 4 years ago (holy shit!) and I’ve decided to revive that blog for scribblings and fictions.

Viva La Recession is a new group blog I’m involved in which pokes fun at the current ‘economic crisis’ and provides some tips on how to make your redundancy cash go further. Ignore the default template for the moment, we’re waiting for someone to get off his ass and do it properly (No names, Priscilla)
We’re also looking for writers so drop us a line if you are interested. *

*WARNING: The admin is a firm believer in the Casting Couch Interview.

I’ve been scanning old family photos for the last while, which is another reason that things have been rather quiet in this neck of the woods. (I’ll go into that in more details later.) My aunt gave me a bag of photos and letters that were from my maternal grandmothers things and because I (unthinkingly) offered I have now become the unofficial family archivist. I’ve gotten about halfway through the pics on my mothers side of the family - at least the ones I know about, I think another uncle has another heapum of photos somewhere in his attic as well.
The pic here is of ‘Gillie and Gang’ - my grandfather John Joseph (also known as Sean) is in the back row, 5th from left. I’ve not been able to find out anything about this bunch of reprobates, other than that my grandfather and two of my great uncles travelled around Ireland with this band in the 1920s. I’m also assuming that ‘Gillie’ is the slightly rotund jolly looking fellow on the far right.
Who knows what else I will find as I continue through the ‘Box of Mysterious and Slightly Dusty Smelling Delights.’
Click for more on flickr.