Advice of the day

Lucy and Tar: a selves-portrait

We talk to ourselves in public

I do, do you? I talk to myself much as I talk to a lover or sister or close friend, about the issues of the day. I've always done it, since earliest childhood. I had my first imaginary friend at 2, her name was Ebony and she was black. In fact, I think she was the only black girl in all of Ireland at the time, imaginary or not. I had various imaginary and living human friends throughout my childhood at different times. But through the whole time, and still, I have always talked to myself. I would be talking to myself now if I wasn't writing this. Though I often talk to myself while I am writing. I break off to talk to myself. It is something very deep in me. Like a cup of tea. Deeper. It is an intimacy, a confidence, a trust, a fun thing. I tell myself jokes and jive, and I think over Difficult Subjects, and I consider out loud the ideas and inspirations that come. And when I get a song in the middle of the night, like I did last night, I sing it out loud.

I am aware that I am probably viewed very differently to an older person, when I walk along the street, yapping away. I suppose there is nothing to be done about that, except to enjoy it while I'm young. I love the fact that I don't really care about how I am perceived, though sometimes it feels like a kind of intrusion.

Do you do this too? Does any of this sound familiar to you? I would LOVE to hear from you. I mean, it's not something that would be meaningful really in itself, to have a roomful of people who talk to themselves out loud in public and private and anywhere they feel like it, because we'd most likely get on with talking to each other. But you know, there would be a kind of kinship.

The murder of Timmy Tiptoes so that Squirrel Nutkin can live off the fat of the land.

They're killing grey squirrels in southern Scotland, and they think they can soften the reality of it by changing a vowel and using an alternate consonant. They call it a 'cull'. It is an effort to increase the red squirrel population in the area. The grey squirrels apparently carry some kind of squirrelpox virus, which has no effect on them but kills off red squirrels.

Naturalists and landowners are joining forces today in a drive to effectively wipe out the grey squirrel from northern Scotland. It is believed to be the largest cull of a mammal yet seen in the UK, with many tens of thousands of grey squirrels expected to be trapped and killed under the government-sponsored project and shot on sight, legally, by landowners.

I was followed around Kew Gardens in London for a whole day by a pair of red squirrels. It was my birthday and I spent it jiving with some squirrels, feeding them brazil nuts, until we met a peacock who felt he deserved them better. He didn't get any. His wife snatched my last brazil nut out of my hand and swallowed it down while I learned something about practicality and the distractions of prettiness. I also got a very sore thumb from chipping at the nuts with my thumbnail. Brazil nuts are hard.

I think it is a terrible pity that humans are intervening in the natural wild profligacy of our friend, personally known to me as the Brooklyn Squirrel. I wonder if Tate and Thea have heard about this? They live in London now. They would HAPPILY make the journey north to help in any way they could to save the noble red squirrels from the pestilent grey one. Um, and then they will HAPPILY eat the red one too, because, uh, you never know.

But really, what are they using: baseball bats? Is this like a baby seal thing? I hear there's a shoot on sight policy. Shooting squirrels? Don't they see how this will be hijacked as a license to vent violent energies without fear of chastisement? Is this why they are really doing it?

And what will be done with the meat?

Stoatdancing

This is being framed in a "When Good Stoats Go Bad" kind of way, but to me it looks like a slinky creature having fun in the snow. Pity I can't embed it, BBC also uploaded it to youtube but disabled embedding, even though they put their logo all over the video.

Apparently the chica can go like this for 15 minutes at a time.

I saw a fox behaving in like manner on Tuesday night in Camden town, London, on Mornington Street, by the bridge. She ducked into a garden when she felt herself being looked at. The second fox I saw in London. The first was on Monday night, sniffing around for food and exploring the snow, in the garden of the house I was staying in, also in Camden.

Um, did you get the Simple Minds reference in the title? Now look again.

You ain't my bitch, nigga. Buy yo own damn fries.

This is the finest thing I've seen on the internet in quite a while (at least since this morning) even if our jiving president (did I just say that? Am I becoming American? Or just an inability to recognise Brian Cowan as anything other than a cement truck?) does sound a little unhip with a filthy mouth.

So, to be clear: these are samples from President Barack Obama's audiorecording of his book, Dreams of my Father, which he has read aloud himself. In this recording, he quotes some friend of his from back in the day. You are about to hear your president say nigga, sorry ass muthafucka, and perhaps the sentence of the week: This shit's getting waaay too complicated for me.

For budding Kenneth Starrs everywhere, take heed: that guy ain't shit. Sorry ass muthafucka got nothin on me. Nothin.

This one, sadly, did not show up in a vicepresidential debate, sigh: there are white folks, and then there are ignorant muthafuckas like you.

This, however is by far my favourite.

If you're having problems listening to the audio samples, you can also get them here and here.

Thanks, India!

Amanda Palmer is alive and singing

I've just gotten turned onto the new muxtape and I really think that this chick ROCKS. She sings about having abortions after daterapes but not caring because she's just sent a fanletter off to Oasis and she'll be seeing Blur in September with her ex-best friend Melissa who was molested and so she knew the right clinic to bring her to after the daterape, but who subsequently blabbed about everything to everybody and so they're not talking anymore but it'll probably be alright by September and it's all packed into a 2 minute frenzy and this is feelgood music par excellence.

Really, this is a great selection of songs. There is some wonky 'room atmos' in between songs which might have something to do with David Lynch, I don't know I didn't watch Twin Peaks, but this chick has got guts and energy and her record company has stopped promoting her for having an imperfect figure and singing about difficult female topics and even so she's getting interviewed by the Guardian and I hope she does well.

There's also a great song about it being ok that there isn't love because there's the Dukes of Hazzard and Southern Comfort.

Fun must be recognised in all her forms. Fun must be allowed to make her way uninhibited in the world, regardless of where she chooses to dance. And by fun I do not mean the fun of the murderer or the fun of the rapist or the fun of the mean girl who used to bite me when I was 6 (Jennifer whose brother was Trevor, if I knew their surnames I would write them here but I do not. They were both blonde, that is all the information I have). I mean the fun that makes its way into earnest and dark places and brings light. I feel very strongly about this. This chick was criticised for doing just that, and tv stations said they liked her song but they would not allow it to be played nonetheless. She has written a fantastic blog post about the topic.


Amanda Palmer is my new favourite person.

So that Ross will understand about Jacques Brel

A hymn from Neil Young, aged 25

Spot that pigeon

Camden Lock, London, today.

Camden, today

Christ. London gets some snow. Schools are closed, shops are closed, people take a day off work, buses are cancelled for the day, the tube is in chaos or suspended, planes are sliding off runways, and nobody's heard of Ice Melt. I'm going to bed.

London, tonight

The view around half nine this evening, walking over the Millenium bridge, with St. Paul's Cathedral visible in the background. More snow than they've seen in years.

Rothko transubstantiates in my room

I have come to London to see a Rothko show. While I am here, I will do lots of other things also. It is getting interesting.

This evening, my first full day here, I returned from the loo to see my water bottle on the floor, seeping water, in this peculiar - there's no way around this but through - maroon Rothko like form. The floor here is maroon, it just is. The floor is a Rothko-like maroon, to begin with. Now, with a dark form in the middle of it, reminding me of the purpose of my visit.

I had no previous knowledge of the colour of the carpet in this place, and I bought that water with a full intention to drink it. It's thirsty work spending hours in the tube, circling between King's Cross and Moorgate, trying to find a functioning Metropolitan line on the weekend, and thus missing the Complicite show that is probably a thing of Greatness. You need water for all that.

Universe had other ideas.

Rothko lives! But yes, I am looking forward to reuniting with those paintings (and new ones! ones I have never ever ever seen before! hurrah!) tomorrow evening.

Gosh, this article is very interesting.

Molly needs a home

Molly is an almost three year old yorkshire terrier/jackrussell cross who looks like a yorkie purebred, and who has more puppy in her than sense at this point in her life. She is also one of the most entertaining, endearing pooches I have ever met. Favourite tricks include Her Famous Kangaroo Act and peeing with both back legs in the air. And she needs a new home, as of today.

Molly was saved from drowning by a very kind woman who now feels out of her depth with her. A colleague of Molly's current owner wanted to drown all 9 (9!) puppies in Molly's litter, and so Molly's owner rescued them and found homes for them all. Molly was the runt of the litter. None of the puppies had been weaned properly and Molly's first weeks in her new home were spent being syringe-fed milk. She didn't take to all this upset at all well, and still Molly is a fraught and finicky eater. She will only eat when hand-fed, gets upset around food very easily, and mostly wants to eat the food that the humans around her are eating. She has just learned poor ways. 

Molly likes to hump her favourite blue blanket and LOVES long walks in the countryside, where her kangaroo act can really shine. She is always at the very end of her extendable lead, straining to get somewhere Very Important. When you pick her up, she trembles in your arms and will look very seriously and earnestly, directly into your eyes for as long as you can stand it. She LOVES to play. She needs to be around people a lot, probably because she was half weaned by one and probably doesn't realise that she isn't half-human after all.

Molly has no sense. She will happily approach twin rottweilers and insult them in the bawdiest terms and offer to take them both on and show them a thing or two. She does not understand that she is a mere bean burrito to such creatures, and that really she is reliant on their mercy for her survival in such cases. She will also run directly out into roads without any awareness of traffic at all, so she will need to be rehoused in a home that has good security around it, in terms of walls or strong fence. 

Molly needs a new home because her owner is a single mother who is taking on further education and a fulltime job in this coming year and Molly would be at home alone all the time during the day. Molly really likes human companionship a lot. She considers them kin.

Molly seems to carry the memory of the precariousness of her origins with her, she has a certain troubledness to her, a certain complexity that is unusual in a small dog. 

I am deeply fond of Molly, and we are going to do all we can to find her a suitable home, ie. a fantastic one. Molly has special needs, and it is important that she finds someone who will be a steady presence in her life, aswell as enjoying her special skills.

If you are living in the Clare/Limerick area and you would like to join the list of eager potential Molly kinsfolk, then please, by all means, email me, or leave a comment below. Thanks.

What I learned this evening in the village pub

1. Deer are a pest in the countryside.

2. The curlew is a tasty bird.

3. A man who they said wouldn't last Christmas one year, is still around, 35 years later.

4. There is a stallion who is married to a barren mare, and who refuses to mate with fertile mares unless his love is standing in the field beside him.

5.  An 89 year old man walks two miles on the open road every night in his reflective vest to sit at the bar, and at the end of the night, walks home again. Every night.

6. Garlic bread goes surprisingly well with your first pint of Guinness in three months.

Black Iraqis get on the stoop

I found this remarkably moving today. Something very sweet about the men standing there, the earnestness. Inspiration is an amazing thing, so many different forms.

They seem so... American.

Cor, what the bloomin' 'ell's goin' on, daddy?

So many of the images in this excellent photo story are iconic, beautiful and moving. But this one is the shot as far as I'm concerned. It's an image of tourists in the Canary Island of Tenerife - a hugely popular package holiday destination for Europeans - looking out a window at asylum seekers who have just arrived in a boat from Africa, and are lined up in the carpark below. The window reflects the tourists' reality, but this striking scene has caught their attention. See it large here.

This is how they arrive. Your huddled masses, indeed.

Or has that old idea gone out of style?

Sing hallelujah c'mon get happy. Get ready for the judgment day.

Excellent article, this, about the press corps surrounding Bush for the duration of his presidency, with the photo editors of three news agencies discussing key images from his eight year tenure. Santiago Lyon of AP adds a caveat:

“One thing that’s obvious, but it’s worth bringing out there, is that there are very few casual photographs of the president of the United States. The whole thing is managed. With the exception of the guy hurling the shoe at him, these are all photo opportunities that are organized by the White House Press Department and set up for the members of the traveling pool or media group that accompanies him everywhere. So you have to look at them within that framework, that it’s being orchestrated to send a message.”

Whereas Vincent Amalvy of AFP feels the opposite, wondering at the unprecedented access that the American photo corps has to the presidency. Many of the pictures are images of the same moment, from slightly different perspectives, framed differently. Jim Bourg has some especially interesting ones.

Something I was glad of when I watched Bush's last press conference - despite the depressing reality of his lack of awareness of the depths of what was going on around him - was the frankness of his humanity. The man is a dolt there's no question of it and his lack of regret, at least publicly, of anything other than the bad photo ops, and his profound lack of understanding about apparently anything at all, is a terrible thing to behold, given the gravity of the office he held. But he is also a human being. Contrast his demeanour in the last press conference with the "farewell address" which was so static and so stiffly performed. And then, those last three photos. Reminds me of stage school kids who learn how to stifle all their feelings and go out on the stage and smile smile smile.

Little horrors, aren't they?

Neighbours

in Shanghai.

Molly