Big Mental Disease

I say this every year but it bears repeating. Why in the name of god do we have to be exposed to Christmas, two months before Christmas day?

Advertising is so pathetic and sinister. You can now buy candles with the scent of spiced apple and cinnamon. Oh how christmassy. Tesco wants us to know about how we can buy all our presents from their shiny new catalogue, as they spread their tentacles into the Argos market. Tis the season to be fabulous according to Boots. Every time I hear those lines “here come the girls” I truly believe that feminism has died. It is embarrassing beyond words.

Christmas lights have already been put up in shopping centres around the country. Since times are tough, how about saving a few euro of electricity and holding back until, say mid December? Every year this kind of madness gets me angrier and angrier. Soon retailers will be urging people to shop local instead of going up North to buy their boxes of booze. I doubt Jesus had booze fountains in mind when he got nailed to the cross. Not that I care, every Christmas is a conundrum for me as to how I can avoid Mass without pissing  people off. I don’t partake any other time of the year and would like to keep it that way.

Everyone seems to get really horny at Christmas time, any party that I have been to around the festive season is just brimming with sexual tension. Mix in greasy cocktail sausages, plastic glasses full of tepid wine and you have yourself an orgy.

It’s pretty boring buying presents because the majority of people in this country have everything they need.What do you buy a little brother or sister that has a Wii, Nintendo DS, DVDs and whatever else? You try buying books and they get sniffed at.

Bah! Humbug.

Roaming around Eason’s and scouring the shelves for some decent magazines is pretty hard when you are female, and aren’t interested in reading about idiotic celebrities, fashion, weddings and having babies. I looked up at the rows and rows of shelves that constitute the “womens interest” and thought, what a load of bilge. Nearly all the magazines had either a faceless model in some bored pose or some trussed up, female celebrity.

Why would I want to spend eight euro to read a few hundred advertisements for face creams and Spanx underwear? At least in the so called “mens interest” , apart from the usual titties rubbish, they have some decent music and current affairs magazines.

Another thing I noticed is the sheer amount of new books being sold, written by women who have nothing better to do. I’d really like to know why dull Irish female celebrities are writing so many books. Is it some sort of requirement, that once you are known by a few hundred people you have to write one? The titles make my eyes cry. Champagne Babes by Amanda Brunker, Heartbreak Hotel by Amy Huberman, Mr Whippy by Cecilia Ahern. I would like to know who reads these books and why? How can they possibly add anything to your day. It’s like reading a script of Hollyoaks, and who would do that, voluntarily?

I was half thinking if my illustrious career doesn’t kick off in the next few years perhaps I too could tread the waters of chick lit. I’m sure there isn’t much to it anyway. Start off with a horny/lonely/insecure female protagonist that is in love with a nondescript, boorish man, then use the next two hundred pages to unfurl various scenes of romance, heartbreak and indecision. Call it something like ” He loves me not“. For the cover, a woman in a car with a bottle of wine and a dozen wilted roses on the back seat would probably suffice. Unfortunately I don’t think that I could live with that sort of thing being attributed to my name. It would have to be under a pseudonym, and I would need a standby for any photographic occasions. That way I could get the money, save my reputation and hold on to my dignity.

I must remind myself never to get involved in the demented queues of a charity shop when they are selling cameras. I thought going there perhaps an hour before it opened would be reasonable enough, but  my heart sank when I saw the large line that had formed. Then there were the two men who seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable to skip ahead and wait at the front of the line. They were soon put in their place by the rabid amateur photographers that  had spent hours before, shivering and staring through the glass display.

The object of desire:

Info

I took a particular dislike to a girl that was in front of me, because she didn’t seem to have anything better to do than to stare at me intermittently over the hour that we were waiting. This girl ultimately proved to be my downfall.

Once we got inside the shop the first few people started arguing over who exactly was entitled to be first served. This went on for about fifteen minutes as the queue outside got longer and longer. Once someone blew their top and stormed out, then the real SHIT began.

The first two people decided to buy the majority of the stock leaving the dregs to the rest of us. As the man at the till said, it was policy that a person was allowed to buy three things each. I was slowly beginning to realise that I had wasted my time.

Eventually it was the staring girl’s turn and she didn’t seem to want any camera in particular, she was just buying one for the sake of it. I saw her pick up the one I wanted and I slowly begin to grit my teeth. She stared at it for a few minutes with a perplexed look on her face and bought it, along with another camera she randomly picked up. That was when I thought FUCK THIS!!. From her actions I could easily discern she did not have a clue about what she was buying. I walked out before the urge to kill could overwhelm me.

I guess I got a bit too caught up in the shenanigans. I had been ogling that camera for two weeks and was amazed at how cheap it was. What a horrid crushing feeling it was when someone else took it. I consoled myself with the fact that she probably didn’t know that the camera took 120mm film. Not the end of the world, but slightly less available than 35mm. HA.

I cooled down once I came home and got back to my senses. It’s very easy to see how people can get injured in those long queues that form outside of massive sales or when flat screen tellys are being sold for a euro in Harvey Norman’s. The collective insanity that descends upon a group of people all grabbing for the same thing is one of the fascinating aspects of  mob psychology.

I guess in the end, it’s just a fucking camera. Let’s just put it down to temporary insanity. I think I will be sticking to ebay from now on, its fairer and I don’t have to put up with people staring at me for no particular reason.

Escaping from a small, dark flat with mouldy walls and manky carpet. It’s great. It’s also great to know that you are no longer paying a ridiculously unfair amount of rent for the privilege of being driven to slit your wrists by the unbearable cold and damp. But the best thing of all is never having to hear that psychotic weirdo with the plastic bag shouting “HOLD IT, HOLD IT HOLD IT!” over and over again as he shuffles along Camden Street, bepissing himself.

How many Insomnia cafes are there in Dublin? They seem to be everywhere I look, nestled in every corner of each street I walk through. Inside you can purchase the same generic fodder that passes for coffee house cuisine in this city. Why go to a different cafe, when you can go to the same one, no matter where you are?

Slowly but surely, everything is homogenising. Walking down O’Connell street is amazingly disappointing. Why do we need a Boots pharmacy in Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, Grafton street and the Jervis Shopping centre? Read the rest of this entry »

Theres something nice about traveling on a bus in the off peak hours when there is fresh air and no stench of body odour. Enough space to be comfortable, and a big, albeit smudged window to peek out at the world from. Given the extortionate charges we are forced to pay to board a train, there are times when taken the bus seems like a better and cheaper option. More money for food and magazines, which is always an enticing prospect.

Dublin Bus Station is very small and is definitely in need of expansion, but things seem to run a lot smoother than Heuston Station. Cheaper sandwiches and friendlier pigeons. ( I see a lot of pigeons with missing toes, walking around on their little stumps. It’s a hard life on the streets).

Dublin to Limerick is a journey of three hours and forty minutes, according to www.buseireann.ie. Given this long time period, it’s probably not a good idea to be glugging copious amounts of liquid unless you have very good urethral control, which I would like to think I have. But nevertheless, I always refrain from drinking too much. The scenario of having to ask the bus driver to stop so I can pee in the bushes, isn’t very appealing. Read the rest of this entry »

More sleepless nights ahead for me, as lately I find myself  plagued by a nightmare from which I suffered all through my teenage years and periodically since. I haven’t had this particular nightmare for about four years but now it’s back almost every night. Read the rest of this entry »

Watched an interesting documentary on BBC4 last night called “The Contemporary Art Bubble”. Now I’ve always known that the majority of the art world is a load of bollocks, unfortunately overshadowing the genuinely good and great artists working today. Just like every part of this greedy capitalist society we live in, everything boils down to money, the rich buying crappy paintings on monetary value created by spin and false demand, rather than actual talent. That’s why you see a canvas painted in just one single colour being sold for millions at Sotheby’s. That’s how Damien Hirst is so god damn rich. I’ve never liked him and the program revealed what I suspected before – that he is just a business man plain and simple, playing the rich for their millions and their egos, as they buy sharks preserved in formaldehyde and cigarette butts installations that his assistants manufacture in his studios. What a load of horseshit!

It’s an amusing sight watching art critics trying to evaluate a blob on a wall, valiantly maintaining a serious exterior, struggling to keep the verbal diarrhoea flowing. Art doesn’t need money to be appreciated and money certainly doesn’t buy you taste. Its best to ignore what goes on in the art world to keep your mind untainted, and free to choose what you like. Like fashion, fame and pop music, behind the slick facade of desire and demand its just money changing hands.

No wonder tiredness occurs so easily- the brain is simply trying to escape. If it had little hands it would be boring tiny indistinguishable holes in the skull at about the time a person reaches the age when they leave college and must start whatever mistake they decided to go to college to be able to do.

Through the early twenties and thirties the holes become greater and greater in number yet are imperceptible to the host. It is only when the brain makes that last and important bore that the skull collapses and the brain is free. which is when it then proceeds to make its getaway, probably to Canada or somewhere almost wild where it can maybe have a farm and read books and drink tea with a bit of nice bread and blueberry jam. The unfortunate human left behind will probably not seem too different, since the brain refused to cooperate or work many years before. And so we are left with innumerable brainless people. Those that manage to hold on to their brain do so with great difficulty and that is why they are so deranged in a way. Read the rest of this entry »

Girls Aloud and The Saturdays ( Who comes up with these crass names?). The Saturdays. The Saturdays. Horrendous. Forgive me if I can’t locate any discernible difference  between these two girl groups. Lets see.. they both sing shite songs, both wear hideous drag make-up and hair extensions, and both twit around in their videos exclaiming things like ooh and aah and doing that annoying over-the-shoulder-oh-tee-hee business. To think that many, many little girls (and slightly dim women) look up to these twats makes a little bit of sick in my mouth. They are so boring, every time I see them on my television screen I have to hurriedly press any button on the remote before a portion of my brain dies. They just try so hard to be sexy and alluring, that it just falls flat and they end up oozing the sex appeal of a squashed banana. When did it become necessary for females to wear so much slap? I assumed the whole idea of painting your face was to enhance your best features and conceal blemishes, not construct a wall of (often ill-matched) skin coloured cement with associated goop for eyes and lips.

Marlene Dietrich is dead and she still manages to outdo them in class and style.