Panadola Diction

Hello! Blogging is shit.

Seriously. But you all knew that. It’s an indulgence, which I like to dabble in every now and then, but it is largely inconsequential and pointless.

Oh, but it’s writing, it’s great to be writing, you say. Yes, well, no. It’s an excuse not to write anything worth writing. I find that prolific blogging periods correspond with zero proper-writing periods, and vice versa. Q E fucking D.

But there’s nothing wrong with the odd indulgence. A rogue cigarette, a glass of A Winter’s Tale, an episode of Emmerdale (Farm), a game of Wii Tennis. Actually, there’s an analogue - blogging is to writing, as Wii is to exercise. Sure, it’s doing you no harm, but you’re deluded if you think it’s genuinely a form of exercise. But what about Wii Fit, you say? Well, all I can say is that it’s marketing genius - the  Jap who said “lets sell people a weighing scales that can count your push-ups for €100″ is truly a clever Jap.

Is saying ‘Jap’ offensive? Doesn’t seem offensive to me, it’s merely an abbreviation. Hello Japs.

Oh, but it’s a gateway to the world of critical media. It’s only a matter of time until I’m invited to write a column for the Sunday Independent, or guest as an expert on a radio show. Or maybe I’ll get a book deal, and become the Loo Read of 2009, you say.  

Oh, but it’s an outlet for my feelings. Woe is me, you say. Yes, woe is you. Woe betide, I’m leaking feelings.

Oh, but it’s a fine soap box for my poorly-formed polemics and amusing rants, you say. Aye, ’tis. 

Have you ever tried standing on a soap box? Your average box of Daz won’t support your average man. I’d suggest one of those foldable footstools available from “The Book People” - those folks who leave ‘books’ in your office once a month - the latest selection of TV tie-in cookbooks, some children’s books, a sportsperson’s autobiography (for the men) and some other gimmicky gimcrackery. Never a novel. God forbid.

So, yeah, what’s my point. Blogging is like Wii? The Book People are cucksockers? Your blog is even shitter than mine? I’ve got Blog-bulimia? I hate books like “Overheard in Dublin“? I’m looking for attention? I am high-i-i-i-igh on emotion? I frown upon enjoyable and vaguely rewarding pastimes? I’m ok with mild xenophobia? I like sherry? No, no that’s not it at all.

And for god’s sake, if you have read this, please don’t feel the need to justify your blog, or, heaven forbid, mine. Or do, it might amuse me. I might kill you though. Ooh, I’ve just threatened the world. Does that make me a terrorist? Relax, Americans, it’s going to be Ohkay.

About two years ago, I went to the bar in Dicey Riley’s Garden and asked for two pints of Smithwicks. I paid with a red note and waited for my change. “40 cent please,” said the bartender. “Ahahaha,” said I, and I vowed never to go there again.

In the interim period I have heard two stories about the place - one involved Colin Farrell, and the other involved a bare-chested man trying to pay a waiter for a round of drinks with cocaine in the toilets, as he’d run out of cash. I think they were unrelated incidents.

Last night, against my better judgement, I went there to meet some friends, to celebrate multiple birthdays. I arrived at 9:30 and was asked to fork out a fiver to enter. Sigh. As I walked in the door, Ireland equalised against Serbia. Woo. I bought a pint of Smithwicks - €5.50. Argh. I met my friends and they told me I was sunburnt, I told them no, it was merely a hat-mark.

Then began two hours of constant harassment from ‘Praetorian Security’ - laughable suited assholes with hi-vis vests telling everyone that they couldn’t stand wherever they were standing. You weren’t allowed stand anywhere in the beer garden - only constant movement was acceptable, apparently. And then there were the heaters, which were on full-blast despite it being a warm evening. And the overcrowding. And the half-hour bar queues. And the music (bad). And the clientèle (vapid). And the €6 lager ( I felt like a peasant drinking my cheap ale).

If I were the son of a property developer and had a bland stripy white shirt with a little designer logo on it, sunglasses on my head and a slack jaw, I would no doubt go to Dicey’s Coke-yard every week and be very successful at pulling sparkly hellpigs.

I can just about understand why someone who worked nearby might go there for a couple of ciders on a sunny Monday evening, but as a venue for a weekend night out, Dicey’s makes no sense to me at all.

I made excuses, left early, headed for the other end of the scale - Carnival (a half-empty, dingy, perfect gloom-hole, with good music and a poorly-stocked bar), and thought about calling in the air strike.

I’m a bit slow with the review I know, but I’ve been busy managing at the frontline. I bought tickets to BSS a yonk ago, and as I had not seen them before I was looking forward to it, despite the other blogs which suggested that Sunset Rubdown or No Age might have been a better allocation of Tuesday night funds. Meh.

And it was great. The publicised no-support-act, three hour set did not materialise. BSS member, Charles Spearin opened the show with the first public performance of his ‘Happiness Project’ - an interesting piece of linguisto-musical experimentation, whereby he recorded conversations with his neighbours and subsequently chopped them up to find interesting melodies in their speech, to later be played over live. It worked quite well, was short and amusing, and seemed to lighten the mood in the slowly filling Vicar St.

I think there were eight BSS members present in total last Tuesday, including Brendan Canning, Amy Millan, Justin Peroff, Evan Cranley, a couple more whose names I didn’t catch, and of course Kevin Drew. They played a great set with plenty of crowd-pleasers and lots of amusing anecdotes in between, including details of what they had for dinner, and musings on Men At Work. A more detailed review and the setlist can be found here on this nice blog I’ve not read before.

For the last hour of the gig I had the dubious pleasure of standing behind a flailing crazy lady. She seemed determined to injure, and her repeated combo attacks of elbow-arse-stamp left me leaning backwards holding my arm in front of my face for safety. She then called me a bastard and complained that my friends were mocking her (they were merely laughing at my predicament). I told her to fuck off in a light-hearted manner, she seemed harmless enough. A few minutes later, after a wrist-elbow combo to the face, she turned around and hugged and kissed me like I was a long-lost puppy. All very confusing. Her male friend/bag-holder tried to distance himself throughout, and looked relieved when she suddenly announced that she was going home.

Anyway, yes, good gig, impressed, disgustingly talented musicians, good crowd, free tickets in exchange for fake email addresses (a choice of Tapes ‘n Tapes, Joy Zipper, Stephen Malkmus, De La Soul, etc. (already had T’n'T and Malkmus, De La Soul disappeared pretty quickly, so took Joy Zipper), not a bad Tuesday night at all.

Spare a thought for the last door you opened. Did you have to think about how to open it as you approached it? If you did, it is a failed design. There’s so much bad design everywhere. Most of it falls into one of two categories - functionality sacrificed for ’style’, or just plain stupidity.

Any door with a ‘Push’ or ‘Pull’ sign is a failed door. You should just know without having to read instructions. Should I push the left or the right door? It should be obvious.

Do you have a Mac? Does it have one of those built-in DVD drives under the monitor? (I’m not sure what model this is) How do you open the DVD drive? There’s no button - fucked if I know. They had them in DIT Aungier St when I was there, and a colleague had to point out that you need to press a button on the keyboard to open it. “Where’s the sense in that?” I said. “Oh, but it looks prettier without a button”. This is why I hate Apple products. Too much pretty and not enough common sense.

And one-buttoned mice - “Why?” said I. “Oh they look prettier without two buttons, and Mac’s don’t include right-click functionality by default, we Ctrl-click instead,” said she. “But that means I need to use two hands - how is that better?” said I. “Ummmmm,” said she, “but look, it’s all pretty and translucent.” Fucking mac shite. What if I want to drink coffee whilst copying and pasting something? I can’t on a Mac. I need to put down the coffee! What if my friend walks past and I want to wave at him/her? I have to stop work! What if I want to scratch my ear? Production must cease. “But wait,” said she, “look at the brand-new Mac mouse - it’s got a revolutionary little ball that you can use to scroll up and down!” Oooh. “You mean a scroll-wheel? Like on a normal mouse?” “Ummmm…. but it’s so pretty!”

“And why is the ‘Power’ button way off back at the back of the monitor, where I have to stretch to reach it to turn the thing on?” said I. “Apple would prefer you to leave the computer on in standby mode, I guess,” said she. “I don’t give a shit what Apple would like,” said I. “But they are so stable,” said she. “Oh come on - you’re not controlling a hospital’s life-support machines, you’re animating a red blob, which turns into a blue blob. Oh look, it’s red again. Blue! Red! Only with the power and stability of a Mac is this possible,” said I. “You’re mean,” said she.

Argh, I love arguing with Mactards. And don’t get me started on M4A format and iTunes.

Right, there’s a nice unfocused rant to start the weekend. It doesn’t even fit into any of my categories. Hmmmmm, maybe I’ll make a new category.

Anyone interested in backing up their design-related rants with some theory should read The Design Of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman. Interesting stuff.

If looks could kill, Seamus Heaney would have injured me yesterday. I passed the old codger on Nassau St, and he tried to look the face off of me.

Perhaps he was in a bad mood, due to a lack of turf to lean on, or some other poet-specific complaint.

Or, more probably, he was annoyed about the Americans who stand waiting for instruction beside their coaches and completely block the footpath, whilst staring across the road and saying things like, “Oh look Hank, Kilkenny is in Dublin, isn’t that neat.”

Or maybe he just doesn’t like the look of me.

(edit) Note - the following paragraph contains no useful information. Don’t bother reading it.

This post was looking fine in work in Explorer, but looked messed up in Firefox when i got home. This is/was partly because HTML makes no sense, and largely because I don’t understand this template. Old Seamus seemed to be interfering with the picture of boys from Son of Rambow in the next post. The only way I could find to keep him confined to this post is to write more, thus enlengthening the post, and allowing Mr Heaney ample room. What an elegant solution. I deserve a Nobel Prize for skillz.

I have no inclination today. Inclination to do what? Exactly.

Here are some of the things floating around on the millpond of my brain:

• Why are Queens of the Stone Age supporting Linkin Park?
• Why do people buy novelty or retro bicycles? For example, the orange ‘high-nelly’ ones that used to be sold in that pointless shop on George’s St, which is now a pharmacy I think. Or, those San Diego style ‘cruiser‘ bicycles, which have no proper brakes. These both cost more than your average bicycle, they offer no advanced functionality (in fact they commonly offer reduced functionality), they make you look like a pretentious ‘tard, and they make people like me aware that you have no common sense. I’m all for novelty and retro in general, but not with bicycles.
• I won the Spanish lottery for the 2nd time yesterday. This time, I won €785,120. I have to call the nice lottery man on the premium telephone number later.
• Why won’t Stinging Fly hurry up and send me a rejection letter in response to the story I sent them? I need closure. (I know, it’s not even been two weeks…. I have no patience.) 
• It’s work-drinks tomorrow night. We accidentally invited a government minister who’s email is similar to that of one of the chaps here, he can’t make it, shame. He did ask us (via his personal secretary) to let him know how it goes though, as he was amused by the twelve “reply to all” emails that followed the group-invite, written in pirate-speak.
• Prague on Saturday.
• I have purchased a day-ticket to the O2 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park, for July 4th. Morrissey, Beck, The National, Guillemots, Siouxsie Sioux, Dirty Pretty Things, New York Dolls and Lightspeed Champion will be on show. I’ve never seen Morrissey live, and haven’t seen Beck since Witnness 2000, so, yes, good.
• I am definitely not going to Oxegen this year.
• I hope they add some more quality to the Electric Picnic lineup. But I’ll go for the pies anyway.
• Shouldn’t deodorant actually be called ‘odorant’?
• Is eating a whole block of cheese in one sitting worse for you than eating the same amount of cheese over the course of a week?
• Robots can ride bicycles (see above).
• I’ll stop this now.

Due to a slight party the night before, I very nearly didn’t go to this gig on Saturday night. Cleaning up a sea of ash-smeared bottles and cans whilst half-dead is painful work - but eventually it was all bagged, pain killers were sourced, a battered sausage was had, and I felt a little better.

So - Crawdaddy, a coke, nothing to sit on, not even a little leanage. Si Schroeder played a supporting solo set, which didn’t amuse me at all. Maybe he’s better with a full(er) band. I suppose I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, and I realise I was in a highly irritable mood, but seriously, I thought he was pretty brutal. Perhaps some of the songs were nice, pretty, deep. I don’t know. I couldn’t get past the weak guitar work and the mumbling. Sing up man, shave, strive for a pleasant guitar tone.

Other irritants included a constantly gurgling water/sewage pipe over my head, a group of people who stood at the back and talked loudly through the whole gig, and a complete cunt of a man and who stood right in front of my face just before DeVotchKa came on stage, then alternated between taking pictures with his huge camera and putting his girlfriend in a headlock whilst talking shite into her ear.

Despite all that, DeVotchKa were fantastic. The four multi-instrumentalists seamlessly blend varied influences and styles, and end up sounding like Mexicans lost in Russia. Or something. It’s easy to see how Beirut have been slotted into their vague pigeonhole. Frontman, Nick Urata, has a remarkable voice, and also chipped in guitars, bouzouki and some nice theremin playing. The dapper Tom Hagerman impressed on violin, accordion and keys. Spotty-dressed Jeanie Schroder (wo)manned the low-end on double-bass and sousaphone (massive wearable tuba), and Shawn King drummed well and made some trumpet cameos.

Don’t ask me what the songs were called, or what albums they were from. I have no idea. But it all sounded great to me. Isn’t it strange. . how four talented, enthusiastic musicians can distract you from homicidal urges. . .

I finally got around to seeing ‘There Will Be Blood’ last night. Before I get to the film, I should explain how annoyed I was by the time I sat down to watch it. Firstly, one of the credit-card ticket collection machines (in Cineworld, Parnell St) swallowed my cinema-going ladyfriend’s credit card, apparently, because it was not retangular enough. This delayed us, though a very helpful cine-man managed to regurgitate the card quite promptly. Then there was a huge queue at the bottom of the escalator because the ticket-checker man was too happy about something unapparent to work efficiently.

Nextly, at the pick and mix sweet buffet thing, I got carried away with pink and white chocolate in various shapes, and my cinema-going ladyfriend was annoyed by the lack of aniseed balls. Whatever they are. We joined the shortest queue, and stood there becoming more irritated as the bearded server (another happy, inefficient Irishman), took his time and flirted with the haw-haw deep-voiced ladies in front of us. Both stealing, and abandoning the merchandise were considered, but eventually we paid for the 300g of sweeties and made our way to screen 15.

Thirdly, screen 15 is a shitty little place, and was almost full. There were two decent seats free in the middle, a few in the front row, and various single seats available. The two good seats had bags and coats on them. I asked the bitch-women at either side of the seats if they were free, and they said no. We sat at the very end of the front row. Several people came in after us, and asked the same bitches the same question, same answer. The two seats remained occupied by luggage until at least 20 minutes into the film, at which point I forgot about them, but in the meantime various latecomers either sat alone, or decided to leave.

So, I twisted my head back and watched Daniel Day-Lewis loom over me for two and a half hours. The film was, in the main, very impressive. It’s been out too long to make it worth my while reviewing it properly. Suffice to say that I liked almost all of it, and the only thing that grated was the almost constant foreboding music, which I felt was completely overwrought, and largely unnecessary. There was enough drama on view without having to be spoon fed shammy suspense-audio. It seemed like a period-drama being crow-barred into some sort of thriller. Day-Lewis is good, the script is excellent in parts, and he makes good use of it.

But those fucking bitches. Cineworld, please ban luggage and abandon free-seating shows.

One thumb up out of two.