Thursday, December 29, 2005

Monsieur Rollebon...

... I am about to have an adventure.

Just a quick post to get myself back on track after ze hectic festivities. The liver, I reckon, is about to put up the white flag but if I manage to survive a quick sojourn to Lahndan for New Year's, then the end may be in sight.

In any case, a lot of people are coming up to me and asking am I really excited because le depart is so close, etc. Strangely, I'm not feeling much of anything except relief at the idea of four months off.

Lots of things to do.

Can't wait to get to Prague and relax.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Auld acquaintances...

Right.

Leon's back, Jim's back, Lil Dave's back... Christian's gone to Japan...

The one thing about the holidays is they're kinda like a spectacular cosmic convergence of planetary orbits bringing friends and loved ones together for brief instants. And they happen but once a year.

I guess Christian going to Japan is kinda like a Halley's Comet offshoot.

In other news, Chomsky is coming to Dublin for Amnesty International and some book signings in early January. You can feel the coffee table intellectualism groundswell already.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The New Lexicon

... or increasingly geeky.

Still you might want to keep up to date.

Snarky = It's like narky, which is a very Irish-English word but this new variant is almost omnipresent in the internet void. It's wherever I look...

Rar = Yeah!

Gah = No way! NO!

Meh = Whatever...

I might post more as I come across them or they become... How you say?

Pertinent.

Caoimhe = Beauty, Grace...

... most definitely nothing to do with Kevin.

So yeah, back into the travel agents last night and I'm hooked up now. Or fucked.

Either way, January 27th, I am outta here, then Prague at the start of February, then whither I might wander. Ok, I know pretty much where I'm wandering till I hit New Zealand but let's leave it romantic, at least at the outset.

Shortest day of the year folks. So I suppose I should leave this entry short too!

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Hihi

Jesus' centre parting has dated badly!!!

- The delectable Amy, taunts God with blasphemous truisms in today's ScaryGoRound!!!

Friday, December 16, 2005

Isn't life precious?

Stuck between a choice between doing some Xmas cards, doing up some RP for Nationstates or some therapeutic blogging / venting, I came here.

People have been discussing pro-choice; pro-life; pro-death on a couple of forums I frequent and it's certainly got me thinking. I'm not really all that concerned about the particular abortion perspective but it certainly exercises arguments around morality and the nature of life that time and again keep cropping up for me.

Abortion, I can take or rather leave, as a women's health issue. But I also have to admit that no matter what your stance on the issue, it represents the termination of a life on this particular plane of existence. I'd rather we just admitted that, rather than try and muddy the waters with definitions and brain-waves, etc.

Abortions are happening anyway and are part & parcel of the planet we have created and frankly, under capitalism, I can see the unfortunate practicality of them. It's also ironic to note that those who tie themselves to the pro-life stance stand in cold solidarity with those who actively contribute to the abortion of opportunity that is propagated in Africa and other impoverished areas of the planet on a daily basis. Given a choice between starvation of a new born because the ruling elites of this planet need to protect the market and profit versus the proper dissemination of contraception and pregnancy termination facilities, I'd have to go for the latter.

Until people get behind the big picture plan of actually changing the world to a system based on need rather than the expropriation of huge resources into the hands of a privileged few for super-profit then really, I don't think the pro-life argument has much of a stand on sanctimonious handwringing over Abortion.

But this leads onto other considerations, euthanasia is a no contest but what of suicide? Personally, I've always thought of it as a choice issue, if you approach in it that manner and consider the ramifications such a decision has on those who choose to love you despite yourself and the unfortunate necessity of somebody cleaning up the afters, it makes it a selfish choice to my mind anyway. But if there was a way of divorcing those issues, I'm not so sure I'd have a problem with such a decision.

Life is absurd in anycase. Take a walk down a street and step over a beggar or two, buy a newspaper and go and sit in some overpriced cafe or bar and marvel at the stories of the world we have created. A vast lottery where chances are, you're going to end up in the 2 billion segment of the planet living on less than $2 a day.

Obviously, the kids with blogs and myself are the lucky ones. We don't have hardship and perhaps that's what makes the idea and the reality of the world so abhorrent to me and others, if I can have a comfortable existence why do so many in power actively seek to promote and actually deepen human suffering? They're convinced they're right obviously and that the system if it doesn't work adequately is the best humanity can come up with. That human nature is completely ingrained to profit, greed, lust and rampant immorality.

Then they give us their system of morality, where wars for capitalist greed are moral and dressed up as humanitarian whilst civil rights go out the window for the promise of false democracy and then willfully ignore barbarous regimes, because barbarism has it's uses; cheap labour for extraordinary renditions probably.

So I've probably hijacked my own post here. Let's pick it back up.

Life is surreal / absurd and fundamentally lacks meaning because we have divorced meaning from it by attaching nothing but consumption to it's fundamental purpose. Get me three or four houses, then I'll be happy, get me lots of money, then I'll be secure.

Security. That's what drives most people.

That used to be why people used to have kids. So that somebody would care for them in their old age. Talk about a vicious cycle.

Nowadays, through our ability to fence each other off from one another and becoming deeply wrapped up in the fundamental importance of ourselves, people seem to be increasingly using children to foist their claim of immortality on the world.

Maybe I'm being desperately unfair but it's just how I feel, maybe having a kid would change my perspective I dunno.

But if he / she didn't turn out to be a great revolutionary I'd be disappointed.

You see?

We all do it.

:O)

Current Listenin'

Donovan - Sunshine Superman

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Martha @ TBMC / Much Ado

So yeah, went to see Martha Wainwright in the Temple Bar Music Centre and she was suitably fantastic, etc. Alot of people had said she was disappointing live but that certainly wasn't my experience.

Ok, it was stop start and not the most professional show but the passion, fun and talent make up for that and lend her, that quirky, sensual charm. She has a really distinct voice, though faint echos of both Joni and Jeff Buckley can be heard at times.

Support act and son of England's finest electric guitarist (according to Dick in High Fidelity), Teddy Thompson, sounds -vocally- so scarily like Neal Casal, it's well, frankly, scary.

But fun was had.

Things to do...

- Book flights with USIT AKA Denise (& Air Alaska???)

- Sort out Travel Vaccinations / Travel Insurance / Australian VISA

- Talk to bank and sort personal loan

- Take out 2nd credit card

- Talk to Car Insurance peeps about Car Rental in the States or NZ for that matter

- Buy gear 4 trip (New boots, new backpack, etc.)

- Learn some Latin American Spanish while I'm at it. I've got 3 months to bump up on phrasebooks.

- Xmas presents! ARGH!

Monday, December 12, 2005

My 50,000

Crowd scenes from the National Day of Protest against exploitation and the recent actions of Irish Ferries. The march took place on Friday, 9th of December in the centre of Dublin but there were other demos around the country.




Thursday, December 08, 2005

Finish him off...

The last thing you want, when Utd have been just dumped out of Europe and you've spent a soggy night doing some *revolutionary* leafleting is to hear these sounds.

*SNAP*

*DU-THUD*

*WRITHING*


Initially I thought he was trapped in the jaws of the trap and was just having a few involuntary spasms but after a short while it became clear that the trap had not done it's job.

Somehow the mouse had been catapulted to the far side of the airing cupboard, perhaps when he initially wrenched the trap, and was lying castrate but not dead.

He wasn't going anywhere and he wasn't dead either.

I did the necessary.

In other news, I'm not liking my dreams much at the minute. Bizarre, vivid stories interlaced with familiar characters from real life but I really don't know what they're trying to say.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Dumb Blonde

Yep.

Hair's changed colour.

Now for the piercing and the mohawk!

Friday, December 02, 2005

Cost Escalation Depression

That rhymes and you know it.

A bit of beat poetry that Amy Chilton (Scary Go Round - see sidebar) would be proud of.

Denise, my travel agent, bless her little cotton sox. Has just informed me that because I'm going to the South East Pacific, with no way to leapfrog Asia, the four continent ticket has just transformed into a five continent ticket.

Now we have additional cost and additional options.

Two things I could well do without.

Current listenin'

Wilco - Misunderstood (From the Live CD - Kicking Television)

Aimee Mann - I've had it

Editors - Camera

Thursday, December 01, 2005

A change of plan...

Bleedin' Air Alaska are not part of the Oneworld alliance deal therefore the San Fran - Seattle leg is also off.

In all fairness to them, they do a very reasonable multi-city flight of San Fran - Seattle - Anchorage that is only going to set me back $450 yoyos. I can't really argue with that.

So I'm going to substitute in a flight from Oklahoma City to Phoenix, Arizona cutting out 1,000 miles of open country where there was really not all that much to see.

It translates into 2 shorter rentals as opposed to one long one. I'll grab my second car in Phoenix after abandoning the first in Oklahoma and then explore Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, check out the southern half of California then up to Vegas to fly to San Francisco.

After I've lost at least one shirt at the poker table of course.

Another slight change is dates for Chile from Australasia. Out on the 22nd March now.

Current listenin'

Gemma Hayes - Another one for the darkness

And here's Gemma herself, enjoying said drink or potentially said drink...