The Toads

Meeting yourself as a young ghost

Over on Sentence First, Stan posted a photo of a local crow's hangout in Galway that used to be an indie club back in the day, and is now derelict. This put me in mind of a flat I lived in once, and revisited a few years later. It was a flat I lived in my second year in Trinity, in Grosvenor Square, Rathmines. I went for a walk one evening and found myself knocking on the door. Mumbled something to whoever answered: it was always a studenty house, absent of commonwealth. And I went downstairs, the door was locked but very easily unlocked, something I had not done before, and was really remarkably surprised to find the door coming free and opening into this apartment that I had spent 10 months of my life in, from 18 to 19 years of age.

It had been a two bedroomed apartment, so completely barely: it was mostly a basement/ground floor shack, with some lousy chipboard partitioning. There were three of us: I shared a room with Caroline, and Tadhg, being the bloke, had a room to himself. This seemed inherently unfair to me, I wanted us to rotate occupancy of the single room, but it never happened. We all paid the same rent.

So I took to sleeping on the couch in the livingroom, by some kind of default. It was as grotty as a reasonably clean flat can be: old lousy furniture, thin chipboard 'bedsitland' wardrobes, awkwardly shaped tiny rooms, formica kitchen table, primary school type kitchen chairs. Cold surfaces and some kind of whiff of institutionalisation in a flat shared by 3 teenagers, all freaked out by life in different ways, and nobody talking about it.

The house I lived in immediately before this was a three bedroomed house in Fairview, still filled with the personal belongings of the old people who had died in it, some indeterminate time before I tumbled in there, with Gavin and the very hairy John, who at 24, was the old man of the raggle taggle group. Gavin and I had just turned 18. Most people had gone to work as chamber maids in Europe or wait tables in America for the summer, like they knew this was how it went: you go abroad in the summertimes. I had no idea that that was how it went, and so I never made it abroad for the summertimes. I did not know how other people did it. I stayed in Dublin and rolled with whatever way the wind was blowing.

Anyway, sometime around September, I hadn't given a thought to where I might live come October, but Caroline and Tadhg rolled back into town and we somehow got the notion that we were going to all live together and the basement in Grosvenor Square was the first place we looked, and with none of us over the age of 20 and thus incapable of holding out for a better offer, we took it.

There were adventures with the gas meter (an economising tip shown to me by the previous tenants, long haired third year English students who came to visit us randomly to see who was living there now) discovered by our matronly farmer's wife landlady; I was sleeping half the day and staying up until everyone was leaving for college in the mornings; eating weetabix with tomato ketchup and various other supernoodle influenced delicacies; probably the only time I had to myself, alone, was on friday evenings when everyone else was gone and I would put on some Billie Holiday songs and sing along to them, before I went into the Buttery (oh for then it had a functioning student bar in it) for the remainder of the evening. Everybody then was older than me. I had gone to college at 17 and most of the other people there seemed to start around 19. Anyone over 22 was just some faraway kind of oldness with no nuance or fathomability. 30 and 50 were basically the same, as far as I was concerned. When I was 18, 22 year olds seemed very old and way more mature than I ever thought it capable of being. Once you had graduated from your primary degree, that was it, really. I just never thought about any of that. Never thought about how I was going to make a living, never thought about careers. Knew I had to write, then one day Richard Beck came up to me nervously and said he heard I sang, and I was sort of in awe, I mean, how the hell did he hear that? I hadn't really seriously sung much of anything since I did Annie as a kid. But I didn't ask him how he had heard, just nodded nonchalantly, and we proceeded to practise singing and playing together for a couple of years after that.

So this evening in Dublin, a few years after all that, and on the wrong side of maturity for my 18 year old's sense of it, I went for a stroll and ended up in Grosvenor Square. I knocked on the door, mumbled something, found myself downstairs, and found it easy to unlock the door, there was a hole in the door under the lock, and in I went.

It was as if it had last been inhabited 100 years previously, though it had only been a few since I lived there. Looked like they either had big plans for the place, or had abandoned all notion of having human beings inhabit it at all. The furniture was all gone, and there were long thin strips of wood from ceiling to floor, taking up the whole space, all the rooms like that, but they were stacked diagonally through the rooms so you could walk from room to room and you could see between them out the window. It was a lot like I remembered it; a shithole, but a shithole with memories. I spent about 5 intense minutes there, pure pounding silence, tore a little scrap of wallpaper off the wall, and closed the door behind me, intending to go back and take pictures. I never did.

Keep left

A New York city dustbin

looking unusually clean and neat.

If it's Wednesday this must be New York

It is, and it's also 6 am. The jetlag gods are gently letting me know who's boss for the next day or so. I can hear the subway trains roaring underground, through the street grills on the end of the block. The sounds of birds, the dogs and the dense thick silence of Clare has been replaced by vehicle beeps, traffic, subway sounds. Everyone has an American accent. The Mexican food is still magnificent. Everything smells differently. The air is dense with new york.

This place is very intimate to me. It is very good to be back.

Oh look, it's the 28th of May. A boyfriend I had once has his birthday today. I don't know where he is anymore. Happy birthday, Gary! I wish you a wonderful new year.

Fancy investigating the alexander technique?

Here is an article from a practitioner, with some easy exercises, designed to loosen the posture and free the voice. I haven't tried it yet, but I am very interested in the alexander technique. It is a system of posture retrieval that aims to peel away the layers of awkwardness and stress that may have been put on the posture, in order to allow it to be what it is, naturally and in the raw. It's an onion-peeling approach that I find heartening generally, wherever I find it.

Especially when you are spending the day in an airplane.

A cheerful community in difficult circumstances

I find this daisy community very very inspiring. Living the vulnerable, open, cheerful life, in some remarkably precarious circumstances. Appreciate your local daisy community!

Instructions for an adventure

I found this on the road into the village a week or so ago, scrunched up. I de-scrunched it, and saw that it was, in fact, a series of very specific directions:

Go over new bypass heading towards the Lahinch Road
Come to roundabout on Lahinch Road
Take 1st left on roundabout
Head toward Ennis
Go 200 yards, see stone wall
Take 1st left after stone wall
And you are there.

On the word 'there' was sitting a small slug. I took this as a friendly sign. I have not yet taken the adventure. I am on another adventure, tomorrow, in another direction altogether. Please feel free to follow the directions. It does not say where to start. Best off starting where you are.

Good luck.

A train journey, revisited

A lovely interlude, as Laura Barton revisits Philip Larkin's 1964 train journey that resulted in his poetic meditation on England: The Whitsun Weddings.

Oh yes and listen to the audio on the Poetry Archive page. Just listen to this poem. As you fall asleep...

Clusterflock presents... live from the 19th century

We are having a history post frenzy over at Clusterflock today. You should join in!

An afternoon in George's Arcade, Dublin

Nora, the amateur

Amateur: lover of. One who does it for the love of the thing, the passion, the rapture of the moment. This is Nora. The following two videos are likely to make you cry if you're sensitive to this kind of thing.

Eek! We ate Grandad!

So we were supposed to be the smart, cool ones, right? New theories circulating in fossil circles suggest that we hunted, killed, ate, and made jewelry out of the Neanderthals.

Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

For added colour to the evolution topic, see also here and here.

I bet there was a little interspecies breeding, nonetheless. You can see it sometimes.

Anyway, it may not have been all happy cannibalism and species war:

"We do need more evidence, but this could indicate modern humans and Neanderthals were living in the same area of Europe at the same time, that they were interacting, and that some of these interactions may have been hostile.

"This does not prove we systematically eradicated the Neanderthals or that we regularly ate their flesh. But it does add to the evidence that competition from modern humans probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction."

And here is a photo of the name of the street

I used to walk down to get to the beach, when I lived in Barcelona last year.

Here's a totally boring photo of a beach on a sunny day

and I bet it fills you with longing. Probably moreso if you're in Ireland today, where it is raining, relentlessly, than if you're in Texas, where it is warm/hot already, or New York, where it is heating up, or where this was taken, Barcelona, where the parrots roam wild and free.

Wonder if I could make a silk purse out of it?

Jumbo puffed pig snouts

This is one of those things you come across when looking for something else and you've just got to put it somewhere. Show others. Illuminate.

Where's that bloody Chinese Flyin' 'orse, then?

Pete n Dud talk about art.

Why do we have no fur?

We have had a Scientific Discussion over on Clusterflock, to debate the issue of why it might be, that humans evolved to a state of furlessness.

So you think banks are out of touch, eh?

Bank advice, in queue. I'm guessing the answer is... fuck no! Just leave it all up to my bank!

An intriguing tableau

Pooches, pooches who need poochhomes

Dude just reminds me of Tar, who also has this issue with ear rebellion. This is Mister Bigglesworth, a "cheeky mongrel puppy" who has been in Battersea Dogs' Home for approximately half of his young puppy life. UPDATE: ok. This one reminds me of George Michael. I can't hold it in anymore.

Liberty, described as "affectionate... loyal... highly responsive", who is currently Battersea's longest resident, at the Home since last August.

Penny, who is very sweet and talented but mustn't be given any chewsticks because she will bury them. Tar also has this difficult compulsion, even when there is only carpet to bury his chewsticks in. We have not thrown Tar out on the street, despite his foibles. Please don't throw your lovely dog out on the street because you discover their foibles.

Photos of dogs who need homes. Most of the dogs in this photo shoot are variant Bull Terriers. My guess is they have all been chosen because of their good temperament and cute physical appearance, to highlight the need for new homes. Bull terriers tend to top these Lists of Dangerous Dogs that have been made mostly arbitrarily, in order to ban certain breeds in Britain and Ireland. Not all bull terriers are Bad.

All the dogs in this photoshoot are all at Battersea Dog's Home, and I hope after this, they will all find new and loving homes, tout suite.

If these photos remind you of how much you need a canine in your life who understands pain and sorrow and has vast capabilities of empathy and paw offering, you will find your own local pound stuffed full of them. Some of these dogs have been at Battersea for months. They usually don't get more than a few days of a chance in your local pound.

How sad, how lovely

Take an hour to listen to this hour long documentary about Connie Converse. Listen to the songs, and her voice. There's an uncanny quality in her. Her songs go on journeys into yearning, into the uncanny.

This is an incredible story. Connie Converse wrote songs on her guitar and sang them in the mid fifties: songs of such intimacy, wit, hip, poignancy and unconventionality that would not be really heard at all in the mainstream until Joni Mitchell came along, and that was just a totally different epoch later. Say what you like about Bob Dylan, intimacy was not his strong suit. This woman was writing these songs before any of these people showed up. Before the Beatles showed up, for Christ's sake. Before Elvis showed up. Before rocknroll showed up. Long before the lone human singing her own songs on a guitar showed up.

It's an hour long radio show, and there are also photographs of Connie from around the time the recordings were made, in Greenwich village in 1954. These songs have just emerged for the first time, a couple of months ago.

Connie Converse left New York, dispirited at lack of record industry interest in her songs, in 1960, right when Bob Dylan was arriving in town. She moved to some city beginning with M: somewhere she never really felt right in, though she had by the sound of it a very close supportive group of family and friends around her. One day in 1974, she packed up her volkswagen, dispatched a bunch of farewell letters, and headed off. She has not been heard of since.

She would be 85 now. I so much want to call out to her, to tell her that people are listening, that we love her songs, that there will be so many people who will listen to and love her songs now. That she was living out of time and place, that people care about her story. That I care about her story.

Connie Converse! I care about your story. I love your songs. You matter. You absolutely matter.


Connie Converse website
on myspace

Ok one more

Play him off, Keyboard cat!

You can get more here.

Health club type places, part 2

On a perhaps related topic of humans gathering at some ungodly hour before noon to go on some shared quest, though they don't perhaps understand why the hell they're doing it, I recall a fire alarm going off in an apartment I found myself staying in, in Memphis Tennessee, one August. Within 24 hours I was staying unexpectedly in an apartment there, hanging out with a bunch of local artists, and was getting woken up by a mandatory fire alarm pretendy drill thing early in the morning.

I had to climb down 10 flights of stairs to the street, with absolutely no idea of whether the whole fucking place was on fire or what the hell was happening. It was a time of ridiculous things happening. Everything was intensely calm. I would have been chill if Chicken Licken had come running up to me that very minute. Out on the street, the alarm stopped, I sniffed the air, got the notion that nothing was on fire after all, figured they'd probably wake me again if it was, went back upstairs and slept for another hour.

Health club type places

So I have just been to a health club type place in the basement of a hotel, where all hotels keep their health club type places, and I spent a couple of hours meandering between sauna, freezing cold plunge pool (coldest I have ever been in, other than winter ocean) and steam. The sauna and steam room were good and properly hot, and I now feel magnificent. It is as though there had been a layer of crud all around me, like in my aura or someshit, and it has now been cleaned away. And I only know this because I can feel the absence of the layer of crud from my aura. That is how I know. By tomorrow morning this feeling of the absence of the layer of crud will have vanished, and I will again no longer know whether I have a layer of crud building around me.

I've been trying out various health club type places, and this is the only one with a cold plunge pool, which really is an essential aspect of the whole thing for me. The cold plunge pool is where it all happens. It's the salt in the sea, the msg in the chop suey, it's the butter in the mash, the gravy on the roast. I feel intensely clean, relaxed, profoundly contented and very, very antisocial.

UPDATE: ok, as I was falling asleep for my nap directly after having written this, I found myself thinking: not antisocial, of course, but unsocial. Antisocial would be flinging peanuts at people having chats. Unsocial is crawling under your duvet for the winter, because you understand burrowing creatures' need to hibernate.

They do this only to get what they want

This is what we're up against. Try arguing with that.

How do they hold up? How do they survive?

Baby pandas milk it. Except for the general tone of playful friendliness, these guys remind me of Cartman.

A year on twitter

I recently passed 1000 updates on ze tveeter, and in a couple of days I will have been on twitter a year. I am recalling my first ever tweet. I remember thinking, this is fucking ridiculous. Has it really come to this? I'm sitting here, trying to think of something to put into this fucking box, for christsake, that is what I'm fucking doing right now. But if I was to be completely honest about what I'm doing when I write in this fucking box I will always be angsting over the whole fact of doing it, and that won't be fun at all. So how do I proceed? Am I to be dishonest in my dealings with this 'twitter'? And to what end? For what purpose? I only know about three people on this thing anyway. Okay, ten. But they're all fucking computer making people and designers kvetching about font details. I don't even understand them half the time. What the fuck am I doing here? This is very unpleasant and I need a cup of tea.

And then in my exasperation, I turned my head to the window. Some flies were standing on the glass, enjoying spring and clearly horny. My fingers flew.

So you think nature is fragile and cannot possibly withstand human whim?

I just noticed yesterday that there are some weeds here that have pushed their way right through the tarmacadam here. The weeds are poking right through it.

Whoever thinks that human activity will indeed blight the earth's surface irretrievably, has obviously never ever met a weed like the one growing through the tarmacadam in front of this house right now.

Black on black

Tar, the profoundly handsome pooch.

Alternative Miss World

What a terribly lovely thing for a rainy saturday evening. (video)

Show tonight, Location one, Soho NYC

I have a photograph in a show *tonight, May 1* at Location One, Soho, NYC.

Open Call, curated by Brina Thurston, starts at *8pm*, Location One, 26 Greene St. DJ and light refreshments served. I believe there will be beer and I believe it will be free. Please go and spot my photograph: this is what you're looking for. A few ooh and aahs when beholding it would really send things where they need to go. Thanks.

OH YES ALSO: There's a Laurie Anderson show there at the moment, closes tomorrow. If you're in New York and you're reading this blog and you haven't seen her show yet, you might want to sort that out.

Considerate poo

This picture speaks 'considerateness' to me. It is dog poo, neatly sitting on top of a cigarette box. Whatever way you look at it, it's considerate. I would like to meet that dog someday and give him a chewstick.

UPDATE In case you didn't notice, the poo is rocking the health safety warning. Considerate!

I came across this on a green issues site, in the advertising space

I didn't cast a vote.

DubKbhBcnBknJoggingWhippet

I seem to have given up the visa quest. Or it has given me up. Or it has gone underground. I hope truly that Brooklyn is my home, deferred for now, but right now I am living in the moment with the nothingness from The Neverending Story eating all around the edges of the moment.

I have a habit it seems of living in cities that get abbreviated to three letters: Kbh (København = Copenhagen), Dub, Bcn, hmm, NY. Wow. Maybe that's it! NY is TWO LETTERS! That is the source of the difficulty. I might have to contact mayor Bloomberg now that he is in his untouchable third term and today, angry (you did hear about the fiasco airplane photo op farce that happened yesterday, didn't you? I mean, we all thought that if nothing else, the Obama administration was fucking smart) and suggest a New York NYN(y) appendage to the usual old NYNY set up. Then I can come, freely. Oh all things are possible.

I'm considering the possibilities of the potential relevance of jogging to my life. See, a jogger would never write a sentence like that. But maybe I'm learning. I am not completely inexperienced in this regard. I used to take off sometimes around a couple of the lakes of København and found it an intense exercise in discouragement and determination. Maybe that's what I need right now. It's also healthy.

I used to take care of a pair of whippets in Bkn (oh my god we've cracked it) and it was hilarious when I got the notion to bring them for a run. I would tear off as fast as I fucking could, and they'd be having a pleasant quick stroll. Sort of smiling up at me, warming up for the cheetah manoeuvres.

God

Omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. God dammit I loved those omni words I heard in college when they told me about what God was.

Dense murky chutney memory

This is more of a tweet than a blog post, but sometimes it's good not to have to try to eliminate punctuation marks in order to say what you've got to say in 140 characters. I had a conversation yesterday with the woman at the chutney stall in Temple Bar food market, and we were talking about how some chutneys are profoundly intense. I was complimenting them on making a hot sweet fruit chutney that I think is perfectly suited to the Irish palate, the perfect balance of hot and sweet. And how I had tasted some chutneys once from India, kept in the house of some ambassador or other who was away probably being an ambassador, while his teenage son had a few people over for a few days, of whom I was one. It was the summer I was 17 and just out of my first year of college, and I was just drifting around where the wind blew in Dublin.

So I went to Dublin yesterday, and wandered around for a few hours. I was a ghost, haunting the streets, mostly. I saw faces that I knew, it is always thus in Dublin, and this is the single reason I find Dublin an interesting city these days. I like to look at the faces. I suppose if I spent a couple of days wandering around København on my bike I would probably spot a couple of people I knew on the street, but nothing like Dublin. And I have run into people I know on the streets of New York, not just in the neighbourhood (it's not such a devastating experience in the neighbourhood, but when you meet someone you know on the subway or anywhere in Manhattan it feels fucking holy or something).

Yeah, faces I recognise, and some of them I have never even spoken to. There is a strong sense - whether you realise it or not of course is another matter - that the fact that you live in Dublin and walk on the street makes you a visible human being in Dublin. You are part of the Dublin landscape, another of the people that people recognise, whom they never ever actually engage with or speak to in any way. But these people make up the furniture of a small city. Recognisability is an invisible, implicit quality of Dublin life.

Of course it has changed. The woman who used to dance and play accordion on that little triangle at the top of Pearse street by Westmoreland street, she's gone. The woman who wandered around dancing and making ley lines energy gestures, she's gone. And me, I was the one racing through the streets at breakneck speed and making hair-raisingly close calls (but always polite when glancing past someone so close I could smell their perfume) on my little red scooter. And she, she too is gone.

So I was passing through Dublin yesterday and I get to talking with the chutney lady about other chutneys I have tasted, and I always remember these crazy salty off-your-arse-hot mango chutneys I tasted when I rocked in at this guy's house at 17, and stayed for a few days. He had red hair, brown eyes and pale skin and he seemed kind of withdrawn in that smart rich kid kind of way. Anyway I have always remembered his name, and I just googled him and discovered that he lives a few blocks from where I lived in Brooklyn.

And we talked about the quality of such chutneys, the chutney lady and I, yesterday. They are murky, she said. Yes, a kind of mud green, I agreed, generally joining in the friendly business of agreement. But those chutneys weren't murky at all. They were salty. And hot. And sweet. And I had never tasted anything like them ever before. And he, this probably 18 year old kid who was our host, was already weary and over everything. He probably grew out of that.

Tar wonders if there is any chance of A Great Adventure Of Doing Things

Octopus grass

More from the Bill and Lara story

These are again, from their first meeting. The original pic being this, of course, and click on it to see it larger. We need to talk about our feelings about these photographs, folks. Please feel free to share in the comments. I can't stop looking at the photo of these two holding each other. The sheer unmitigated joy. I am so happy they have found each other.

Meet the mandrill family.

16-year-old male mandrill "Pablo", 10-year-old "Zora" and their four-week-old baby play in their enclosure on March 20, 2009 at Munich's zoo Tierpark Hellabrunn.

Click on the picture to make it bigger.

Bill and Lara meet for the first time. Lara has been lonely.

Polar bears Bill, right, and Lara react during their first meeting, at the Zoom Erlebniswelt zoo, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Friday, April 17, 2009. Bill came from the zoo in Bruenn, Czech Republic, as a new partner for Lara.

Click on the picture to make it bigger. You can find these and more photographs of zoo animals in springtime over at the wonderful Big Picture.

Pagi and Palu, the sun bears

Pagi, right, a female Bornean sun bear cub whose name means "morning" in a Malayan dialect, licks her brother, Palu, who is named after a valley in Borneo, as they made their public debut at the San Diego Zoo on Monday, March 16, 2009. The twins are only the third Bornean sun bear litter to be born in North America, all of which have occurred at the San Diego Zoo, where researchers are studying reproductive biology and maternal care of the sun bear.

Click on the picture to make it bigger.

Fancy a tabby bengal?

Hep cats, of the four distinct types of Bengal tiger existent in the world. What a photo shoot.

MAKLAK

My favourite thing on the internet right now.

What excellent news

this is.

So there's more to it than that

You know it's true I do more stuff than I said a few days ago in a post about how I don't do much other than stare into space while "working on a song" and tend to the menagerie around here, lately. I mean, mostly I do those things. Those things take up most of my day. But also, I fuck around on the internet for 15 hours a day like everybody else, and that includes looking at some interesting stuff. So at the very least, I could hit you up with some of that stuff. But you know, I suppose I think if I post something here I want to be wholeheartedly enthusiastic about it, rather than, uh, not being wholeheartedly enthusiastic about it. And yet...

Yesterday I discovered Jeffrey Lewis and Janelle Monae and returned again to Jamie Livingstone's daily polaroids. I can't describe what it is that I love about these pictures, so many of which are unremarkable, or badly exposed, polaroids, but the textures of them renew my love for film far more rawly than some gorgeous clean beautiful pictures I've also been looking at elsewhere. There is something so roughly gorgeous about Jamie Livingstone's lifelong daily shot project that takes my breath away.

Jeffrey Lewis? Sidewalk cafe guy, plays that folky sixties style guitar with a kind of maniacally dense lyrical style, ripped off melodies (Suzanne Vega's Luka for one, and a Blind Faith song, "You can all join in" -- though in fairness the BF song goes "Make up your own words up if you want to, any old words that you think will do" -- and somewhere else a paraphrased Leonard Cohen quote that is magnificent in its original), but he does it interestingly and he clearly loves music and it's playful and depending on your mood, listenable stuff. He's on tour right now, seems to spend a lot of time on tour generally. But basically, he's very new york, which is kind of comforting. You know? When what is considered new york these days is so fucking bland, it's nice to hear this and recognise it, to know that this is Typical L train Rider and hear his thoughts. Also makes comics.

The other gal? Kinda fun. Listen for yourself.

So here's a thing that bothers me intermittently, lately. This is the first time in popular music history when vast swathes of the people who are arriving on the scene and making music are largely rehashing-without-reinventing earlier periods of music, whipped entire from 1982 electronica or 1964 Motown, and literally just mimicked to the last detail with cut and pasted new lyrics onto them. This has never happened before in this way, and the entire music firmament from labels to magazines is lapping this shit up wholesale, and encouraging it, calling it genius. This bothers me.

It also bothers me to see people walking around in eighties drag. It's weird shit, man. Why would you want to do that? It's not everybody who is doing this of course, and there is interesting music being made nonetheless, and it isn't as if music has not historically been endlessly appropriated and appropriated again. But the history of pop and rock music has up until very recently, gotten forged by those who reinvent what came before, rather than literally literally mimic the exactly approximated and carefully studied mannerisms and tropes of what came before. This creeps me out. It's like music stalking. It's like identity theft. And it's being done by 20 year olds with talent. And it is what is, if anything, getting hoisted and Grammied™ and lauded and sold sold sold sold sold. And, of course, even more depressingly, bought bought bought bought bought.

I was also looking at some highly improbable, fun stuff yesterday.

Bright, pretty New Orleans-based Swedish one woman band.

We really have a lot of hissy fitters living in the house this week and it is beginning to get on my one remaining nerve.

Oh, and this is a wordcloud of my um, followers, over at twitter. It's clear and kinda nice.

West Side Story Drama in my kitchen

Koko, yes the Rita Hayworth one, has just come into season this past couple of days. Just in time for Monty, the suddenly Aflame and Renewed springer spaniel, who normally spends his days asleep, but now who is frantically in love. We have to keep them apart, so that Koko does not return to her owner having lost her honour. We will NOT be putting purity rings on them or playing Jonas Brothers pukesounds in their ears, but Monty IS pissing all over everything to let Koko know he is coming for her, calling out to his beloved to keep her faith, that he is on his way. They are making their bark-aria as I type.

This is likely to continue for some days. This may be like this for a week. Hey! We need some patience over here. Can whoever gives out the patience bring a truckfull of the stuff over here? Just dump it in the yard, we'll make light work of it.

Thanks.

Tar

A nice hedge

I think this is the lucytakesoff version of intermission muzak. But lush. It is spring!

CD release party tonight, Paranoid Larry's latest record

CD release party at *6 pm* TONIGHT for a fantastic record I did backing vocals on:

Paranoid Larry & his Imaginary Band: The Struggle For Existence

68 Jay St Bar (at Water St.), DUMBO, Brooklyn. No cover, $10 for the CD. Larry's the one with the most serious beard in the room. Say I sentcha.

Paranoid Larry on Myspace (the current record isn't up there yet)
The Roches sing Paranoid Larry's No Shoes
The record on CD Baby

Meet Koko

She is our latest one.

It seems that all I can really write about in the public sphere at the moment is #mousenews, or #catnews, or #dognews. For ye of no twitter, the # is a shorthand way of indicating a topic, within the 140 character space restraint of the tweet form. (Favourite recent hashtag: #whencrackgetsintothecattery).

It also helps with @ replies, when someone responds to a particular tweet on a topic, so you know what the hell it is they're talking about. Some people don't use or get hashtags at all, some use them dilligently and very properly, and some have fun with it.

But just about everything I have to say about anything is getting sucked into my current project, a record I'm writing here in the hut, with only the local fauna spilling out onto the internet afterwards. So I imagine that a lot of internet folks think I am running a menagerie around here (not hugely far from the truth of my current circumstances) or that I am animal-obsessed. Fact is, there are not a lot of people around and the animals are almost always entertaining. And they have stuff to say. And I listen. I tweet for them sometimes. Clean up their pee. We form bonds.

So. Koko. Koko is one of these glamourous, pretty, troubled types. I'm thinking, Rita Hayworth. She's also playful (particular interest in ball games), likes to be given lots of attention and has hissy fits when she is not being attended to at all times. We like her very much and she sleeps in a bedroom at night, spends most of the afternoons in the kitchen.

It is time for my second coffee of the day, and another session assuring Koko that she is loved for her mind.

Mulligan's, Dublin with a guinness, detail

Taliwood: the future of disaster movie epics

Has anyone considered setting up the various Talibans with some 35 mm cameras and a special effects budget, some sound stages and Macbook Pros? The latest from the Pakistan Taliban (is that like Bjorn Again, or something? A tribute Taliban-d?) is that they intend to launch an attack on Washington that would "amaze everyone in the world". Ah, that's what they're after. They just want to amaze us. All too easily done with light and shadow, and the right budget.

Can somebody tweet Barack Obama with the idea?

Kim Deal pedalling.

Happy to be the cat who MEOWed

This is Where, screening at Beefstock Music Festival today

My This is Where project is screening in New York later today during the Beefstock Music Festival in the Catskills. Lots of friendly people and good music.

My Birthday Mouse

Small Deadmouse, and Missus from Lucy Foley on Vimeo.

This is what I got.

#mousenews

Just met the mouse again. We meet every night, around this time. Slight mutual alarm. Though he is deeply cute, I will prob bring the cat.

The cats have disappeared into Mouseland. They are looking around with wonder, inhaling deeply, ecstatically alive and grateful. #mousenews

My plan: the cats will flush the mouse out, and then I jump in at the last minute of batbatbatting to cut a deal with him. #goodcop #mousenews

Plan was to play goodcop with the kitchen mice I have written about previously, once the cats had flushed them out. But now I'm watching Capote. Think I'll just interview the cats afterwards instead. #cruelbutsuccessful

I mean, I will spend time with the cats. I will gain the cats' confidence. I will bring the cat kittenfood when they have, um, starved themselves (albeit HIGHLY unlikely). I will share stories with the cats from my own difficult kittenhood even if it didn't happen. We will share. I will take their litter tray away and scrutinise it. I will write a great book. A great book. All the cats in apartment land will secretly read it, savouring every word, every batbatbat, every crunch. Vicarious.

Liveblogging #mousenews daily at twitter.com/herecomeslucy

Perplexed

God, look at this photograph. It was published in the Guardian last week, another of their series competitions under the theme of 'absorbed'. This is such a complex beauty. It's almost like a Raymond Carver short story. The tomato juice, the mirror frame and the ketchup bottle hold the image of the man with a kind of reassurance that he clearly has no access to. The ashtray keeps the letter pinned to the table, as if it will jump up and eat him otherwise. I get the impression he is probably reading the same sentence over and over and over, trying trying to understand it. This photograph, needless to say, didn't win the competition.

The fact is, of course, that this picture is exactly how I feel today.

Roman water labyrinths through the deserts of the east

If you're keen on ancient architecture and underground waterways, you'll love this. Otherwise, not so much.

An art career is born: toilets and taoiseachs

If they won't hang your paintings, just paint something eye grabbing, topical and political and guerilla hang it in the Royal Hibernian Academy and the National Gallery yourself instead. The hell with it, paint the prime minister naked on the toilet. And make it topical. Toilets and Taoiseachs. Get the media involved.

Get the police involved. Ooooooooh. Delicious. Delicious. The POLICE are hot on the tail of this artist.

Jay Jopling is surely not far behind.

UPDATE: RTE, our national broadcaster, today apologised for covering this topic of power, politics, nudity and alleged crime, in the main evening news, as a result of a complaint from the office of the Taoiseach, who considered the story irrelevant. Yeah, I mean, who could think such a story remotely interesting to the populace (especially in this economic and political climate)? I wonder if the office of the Taoiseach would recognise a newsworthy story if it bit them on the arse on the bog and painted them?

The greatest thing to hit email: Undo Send

Yes folks, gmail now allows you to go up to five seconds backwards in time and delete an email sent in error, regret or neglect. Isn't this just about the finest thing to hit email since, uh, gmail?

If you have a gmail account, just click on the labs tab under settings in the top right side of the page, and scroll down until you find it. Then forever after, you will have a few vital seconds to change your mind when sending an email! Hurrah!

Honey, I'm home

Wild Life in Coole Woods

My Bloke

So. It has been a bit of a gap. My bloke was visiting me here in my exile, and making windows. We have been having a Really Great Time with just about everything. He has just about landed back in Brooklyn now, and things will probably get a little more regular around here again. Note: this does NOT mean that my bloke is bad for my blog. My bloke is bad for my internet habit, entire. And this is a Very Good Thing Indeed.

Iraq: the new Croatia

Package deals available now.

Mike Dresser

Mike Dresser: Monkey-Bombing Axe Murderer.

St. Patrick's expose

Stay tuned around st. patrick's day by the way. I'm hoping Lucy Takes Off can bring you some interesting photos from the Limerick festivities.
UPDATE: we stayed at home and played music, and got loved at by the dogs. Sorry.

Wagon train

A collection of Romany gypsy caravans are going up for auction next week. Since I was a kid, I have wanted to live in one of these. At least some of the time. You can take your sleek modern minimalism and shove it up your arse as far as I'm concerned. I'm all for wood, warm textures, swirly patterned soft furnishings and painted details, a horse up front, and the open road.

Bam. Bam. I am. The man.

Hit it.

We will get over this cat thing really soon, I know we will

but until that day, we will look at this.

Life for women in Haiti

This makes me very sad, but I cannot look away.

Interspecies Loving, or, Get-You-In-The-Mood Friday #1: classic cat and dog

This edition of Interspecies Lovin' Friday might just have an anthropological edge for the same money, so hang on in for the ride. Today, we are featuring the classic dog and cat scenario: a volatile and needy situation at the BEST of times.

Here we have a classic moment of edge of interspecies cuteness. The cat finds the chihuahua so godammed cute, he just can't stop himself... these things are so often about subdom issues when it comes down to it.


In the next video, it is clear what is going on is that the siameses had been bored of each other's company for a very very long time, the sheer sameness of it all. And then the puppy arrived... The classic three lover relationship. The love seems to be truly shared around. Note that the dog is not a chihuahua. Only with this species variation could this situation be so harmonious.


The following pair of videos, when viewed in tandem, will help you to learn something. Ok, so look at this first. The picture of interspecies grooming harmony (with a little subdom edge, clearly, if you scrape the vaseline lensed surface away). There is simply no question about it: the chihuahua is this cat's bitch.



Now. Take a look at this. Same cat. Same chihuahua. But realer. More complicated. Also the introduction of cat #2. We are ready for more.



Have you noticed how the cats are ALWAYS the dominant partner?



But can they really get along? I mean, outside of the sofa, the bed, the livingroom floor? Tune in next friday! We might have donkeys. I am not promising anything, Cindy.

Myspace looks different today

They've prettied up the song player. You can see it on some of the links I'm embedding today. And no, I have not forgot that is Cute Friday. I will be getting you hopped up on some small cute servings later this afternoon.

So, today's post is simple. It is What I Am Listening To Right Now.

Started last might with The Bowmans, for the second time. To be honest, I find something a little twee and clicheed about their songs, but godammit the sound of their voices together is just gorgeous. Their tone is not hugely varied, but it is thick and luscious. Lullaby-like.

They will probably not like this appraisal if they come across it. Nobody likes less than total enthusiasm when you've worked your arse and pocket off for months to make a labour of love. I dig that. But I also dig that I can listen to this stuff and it is not the kind of stuff I would normally find interesting, but I can hear the beauty in it. The last three songs of this myspace selection are particularly smokin', actually. The Bowmans are selling their new album now, from their myspace page.

I'm not a fan of earnest/cryptic Americana to be honest, but I can't get enough of Gillian Welch for instance. It's amazing how tiny the degrees are between what leaves you indifferent and what makes you ache with desire.

With Welch and Rawlings, it's again the gorgeous complementarity of their sound together, but it is also the sheer dryness of the tone, this desert-like tone, and their incredibly specific, clear, simple, hip, unclicheed songwriting.

Ok, so I've just watched Pete Doherty being interviewed by Pat Kenny, the most untalented, unsocial man to have a lifelong career in chatshow interviewing.



And then there's part two of this interview. Watch the kid on drugs shine over the man who thinks he's interviewing him for a bank clerk post. Does Pat Kenny not understand the notion of actually trying to get the best out of your guest? Clearly he's done his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Gay Byrne, particularly those interviews where Byrne grilled American mistresses of bishops who bore said bishops sons, like it was the Spanish Inquisition, rather than noting Byrne's natural hammy friendliness at times. Unfortunate choice of influence, but then I guess you can't always choose what you become influenced by, can you Pat Kenny? I'm sure that Pat Kenny has met excellent listeners in his time, but he hasn't noticed, clearly. Because if he was listening to this interviewee bearing his fucking soul for him, he would have noticed that the business of becoming mixed up in drugs was not the coolest thing that Pete Doherty thought he had ever done.

Ireland is an island nation of course, with a certain narrowness of outlook, and perhaps Parkinson's matey and gracious warmth was just a bridge to far to emulate. To be honest, I really put it down to the fact that Pat Kenny is good at numbers, and talking about economics on the radio, and really committed when he is doing that.

But when he's interviewing humans who are Different To Him, he misses every last bit of the good stuff. In this interview he sounds like a moralising tabloid, missing the humanity. He's clearly prepared to interview a half-conscious junkie, and instead gotten a lucid and openhearted junkie, and he can't even recognise this. There is a difference, mister Kenny, between 'asking tough questions' and 'endlessly harping on the same question 15 different times'.

So. The part of this interview that set off a hurrah in my heart was when Doherty tells Kenny that all the questions he has asked him in this interview were about "drugs or Kate. I bet you couldn't mention a single song I've written." And the answer from Kenny is that no, he couldn't. And Doherty responds with " well that is what I would like to do. I would like to put a melody in your heart and your head, and that that would be the first thing you would think of when you think of me". And then he sings his song.



Pete Doherty also has a record out next week. Two of his songs are up on myspace.

Thanks to Paula, who linked to Pete in one of her last posts on her blog.

Closed Zone

This is a very short piece of animated simplicity, made by Yoni Goodman, the animation director of Walz With Bashir. It's a little window of metaphor of life in Gaza.

Sayin it like it is, and spamming twitter with it

This is what a twitter spammer looks like. You can block them, and that is what I do, but you know, I paused at this guy's bio. I mean, he's getting at the core of the human condition in five words there.

Pithy.

Sita sings the blues

I watched this a couple of days ago and it soothed my soul and the world caught fire. It's a full length animated film available in full, for free, here. It has been created from the mind and heart of Nina Paley, and she has woven some profound human archetypes, stories that resonate again and again in our lives, into this fabric of her own story, using the songs of Annette Hanshaw and the classic Hindu story of the Ramayana. It is wonderful, and profound and funny and gorgeous. It made me cry and it made me hot.

Nina moved from San Francisco to India to follow her husband, who had taken a job there. What she found when she went after him was coldness and withdrawal, leading to him dumping her by email while she was in New York for a meeting. Unable to move back to San Francisco, and with her marriage in tatters, she took a flat in Brooklyn and grieved. And five years later, she gave us this.

She has released it openly, on a creative commons license, available for anyone who wants to download it, and it is also streaming freely online. She has written about how important it is to her that stories and music that she found in the public domain be released back to that domain without restriction. And so she is now in a position of having to buy herself 'out of copyright prison', in other words pay the holders of the copyright to the songs used in the movie, $50,000 for their use, even though the songs were written over 80 years ago. If you are moved, this is how you can help her on her way.

This movie tells Sita's story so beautifully and elegantly and with such truth, accuracy and insight. What a gift.

What has happened to Katie Shea?

This post is a special request from my budding flea fanbase in Oahu, Hawaii (hi guys! squeak squeak squeak squeeeeeak!! Hurrah!). They wanted something they could read.

For the humans, this is an excerpt from my lovingly tended, daily fed spam folder, which reassures me: "you will become popular among the hottest women" (phew, eh?) and then proceeds somewhat cryptically, "Show off with your power and star". I guess it's time to finally do something with that Betelgeuse I've had tucked away in storage in my parents garage for a while.

This urging was sent to me by Katie Shea.

Katie used to be such a lovely robust, salt of the earth Irish woman. Now, she has become a soothsayer of sex. I admire her versatility in this celtic rodent economy, and wish her all the best with her future career.

Spam anxiety

I just got a spam letter from a gentleman who tells me 'I wait in internet cafe'.

I did not realise i had such an appointment. It seems I am very late because the flight alone to the philippines is 10 hours. I hope he has a sleeping bag.

Cat Friday

A short expose of the truth of cat.



This seems to me to be a kind of parable about the dangers and responsibilities inherent in getting everything you've ever wanted.



And in every cat friday there's got to be a dash of sheer dog truth. Because they are the other side.



Now stop purring all over me and go clean up your litter tray.

For Reuben

I think you will like this.

It's Bill Hicks, aged 18

He died 15 years ago yesterday.

Feeling groovy/Feeling hoovy

So they've discovered a 'bright side' gene, which, if plentiful, ie. 2 are present, can lead to a life of greater wellbeing. The presence or absence of this gene is being attributed as a key factor in "resilience to general life stress", deciding whether a person is "neurotic and anxious" or able to take things as they come and not worry too much about the future.

Genetic tests on the participants showed that a tendency to ignore negative images and dwell on the positive ones was strongly linked to a variation in a gene that controls serotonin, the brain's main feelgood chemical.

Each of us inherits two versions of the gene, either two short ones, two long ones, or one of each. People who had two longs versions were most likely to focus on the positives, according to the study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

I wonder, though, how much other parts of the system aswell as cultural factors, come into play in ultimately deciding behaviour. Is it really that bald? A question of 'ignoring negative images'? I mean, humans are so much more complex than that. An artist, storyteller or forensic detective may, for instance, have a tremendous interest in the 'negative', as a source of wildly interesting human behaviour. Anyone who wants to explore life at all will have to jump into a sea of what in certain company would be called 'negative'. We are not exclusively positive entitites! Sure if we didn't 'dwell on the negative' sometimes, we'd be glossing over images of horror in the world, without a care in the world, wouldn't we? Or would our two optimism genes actually make it easier for us to gaze into those caverns of dark humanity?

Gene stories are the old wives tales of our time. They are stories we are told about our condition, stories that we have no way of verifying objectively, but which can be interesting entry points yet again into exploring this wild human nature. Or they can make you feel very very depressed indeed. And nervous. And anxious.

I wonder if Ireland is a classic example of an entire country of people firing ahead on two full bright side genes. You'd need them, every time you listen to the radio these days.

So. Which one are you, do you think? Two longs, two short genes or one of each? The glass half full, or empty? The glass being fucking addled with poison either way, or grand sure, lovely, delighted to be here?

That time of the night

I believe this is called commenting outside the box. That, or drunk off my arse. Thing is, I wasn't.

Emailing the past

That seems to be part of my job for the next while.

Clusterbook #1

Clusterbook #1 from Lucy Foley on Vimeo.

This is a project I have going on over at my other home, Clusterflock, where I have made a bookclub, and the first book we are discussing is one written by another of our tribe, Daryl Scroggins. A bunch of us have read it, talked about it, and are now opening the floor to anyone who has read it and wants to talk about it, to come and talk about it some more in the comments area.

We're going to make the post a feature on sunday, so if you have read Daryl Scroggins' book This Is Not The Way We Came In, then you might want to come on over and chat on sunday. We'd be delighted to have you.

Boney M, Belfast

This song was roaring through the charts at the brutal height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, by a band originally from Monsterrat and Jamaica, who were then based in West Germany. It would be easy to wonder how this didn't actually end the troubles once and for all in a rainbow coalition of glitter and sequins, but really, the mind boggles at how a 15 year old living on either side of the Peace Line would have processed the information on their tellies, watching this video in Belfast in 1977.

And weird too, because this band came from West Germany, which had its own Wall at the time. I suppose it was easier for them to sing about Belfast than Berlin, but only goes to show that disco and raw politics don't blend incredibly well. I do think they meant well and their outfits - not to mention lipgloss - are fucking incredible.

The song was originally called "Londonderry". I guess they chose "Belfast" because it was less partisan, but you know, Londonderry probably had more of a ring to it, rhyming wise.