Hitting the walls and working the middle

So it's NSFW only in terms of a wordfest, but what a fest of words. And that means Not Safe For Work, folks. Happy Thanksgiving.

The Philoctetes Project

Interesting audio piece from NPR talking about a project that attempts to help veterans and their families rehabilitate from war, by immersion in ancient Greek tragedy. Philoctetes was very close to my heart at one point. I was talking about him recently. I think it's time to re-read the play.

Mouse armour

The perfect Christmas gift for the mouse you hear in your kitchen at night, the perfect foil for the cat who loves him, and if you can pull it off, hours and hours and hours of fun for you.

Where's the money?

Good point being made here by the Guardian. The post-election euphoria is still rebounding, but meanwhile money's too tight to mention. The last I heard, Cheney's 'approval' rating was at 2%, Bush's Texan charm taking him all the way up to 10%. It shows in this bizarre bizarre pantomime of a press conference.

It's clear that Bush really doesn't have a clue what's going on, doesn't have a clue how to address it, doesn't have any kind of minds around him who have a clue, now that the game of sucking the goodies out of the sucking tube is drying up, now that the sucking tube is blocked. Whatever you think of him, it's clear that he really doesn't have a clue, that he is totally and utterly without any understanding of this crisis, having left all the business of understanding economics to the Frat boys of Wall street, who 'got drunk' and made a balls of it. He's stuttering and floundering, having left all the business behind of being able to look your colleagues in the eye, of having colleagues who had any interest in looking back at you straight in the eye, without being on the make, without having something to hide.

The contrast between these two men seems to me to be a bit like the difference between a neglectful parent who really never noticed that they were neglectful, having no way of knowing or understanding any other reality, until one day the social services came in and took the child from their care, into the hands of a sober, kindly, capable foster parent. The depressing bit is that America needs the intellect and efficiency of an Obama right now, and there is still 60 days to go under the helm of an administration that hams things up with handshaking and shitscared cluelessless.

So, who is this band?

Oh, this is your blog.

Jethro Tull.. Must be a later record. I followed them quite a bit, for a little while. He chuckles. I like his chuckle a lot. It is one of his best qualities.

Oh, there's Traffic again. Don't be sad. I just want to see you get through.

When do we get the icecream?

Yikes. He gave up icecream for 25 years, until he met me. Now, it's icecream nightly. It's almost imperceptible, how it's happening, but it's happening.

Now, I reply. And dish out the Phish food.

I don't know if you're getting enough of the phishes, I say. I've got enough, he replies. I'm going to pause right there. That's more icecream than I've eaten in a long time.

It's happening. Slowly.

Visit from a friend, long time not seen

I'm having a new lease of life with an old friend I haven't seen in some time. It's happening in my dreams. I just dreamt of a man I used to be friends with for a few years, from when I was sixteen. He was quite a bit older than me and was one of my closest friends, until, just before I came to live in New York for the first time, our friendship somewhat suddenly, stopped. Just a few hours ago he was in my dream again, it was the second time in a couple of weeks.

Literally the only times I have seen this man in five years are in a couple of movies I knew he had acted in, which I saw recently for the first time, and then two weeks ago, when he showed up in my dream. In that dream we met in some kind of office, like the front office of a bank, and we went down to the bottom of it and he was so thrilled to see me, and we just greeted each other, hugging and delighted. I was slightly wary, I anticipated some kind of cold shoulder or accusation, but he seemed genuinely warm and friendly. It was cool to get that dream.

Last night was somewhat more elaborate. He was living in some very strange place, kind of a Sam Beckett kind of landscape, mixture of Happy Days and Godot. He was really very happy, as in the first dream. He was living on a hillock above this little set of cubicles, the principle of them being one that housed a woman, who was a local prostitute, kind of in the manner of Dogville, without actually being chained to anything. He introduced her to me, and clearly she had rocked his world and opened it up, made it lighter. But I was concerned about her. She was living in this little two doored cubicle, and people would come and have sex with her in it, as she described it.

So I was just hanging out with her and him and whoever else was around. There was a party, more prostitutes, of the kindly world war one "cheery oh, dearie" type.

It was good to see John in such good spirits. I miss him sometimes, and talk about him often.

Hey, you're ok, you'll be fine, just breathe

This is a song that was written to help a friend of the songwriter's to chill out when she got anxious. The man who wrote the song put the basic track on the internet and asked people to sing along with it, and send the recordings to him. He mixed the results, and got this.

The mouse who came in from the cold

We had a visit from a small mouse last night. I woke up several times, listening to him poke about in the house, wondering what he was doing, thinking of the piece of baklava I had bought from that lovely lovely Egyptian man who runs the falafel shop on Clark street. This morning I discovered my bag had been unlocked, opened, and there was an explosion of half-eaten baklava (that still looked deeply yummy) all over the bottom of it.

There were small mouse claw marks on my brown leather wallet. He had clearly used it as a perch from which to enjoy his baklava. It was a cold night last night. We had had some hot whiskeys, and I there was a little left in the bottom of one of the glasses on the counter, about half of that left this morning.

That mouse had a good time.

New look LTO

So it's three o'clock in the day and I have spent hours farting around with the Lucy takes off template. Godammit. And now for a meaningless meander into Manhattan.

I hope this enhances your viewing and reading pleasure around here. Dishes of cigarettes to be passed around shortly.

Road patterns, London

Chocolate torte update

There is no chocolate matter in the house that interests me. I have just eaten a banana. We also have apples. Revolution!

Ps. Please don't be scared off by the chocolate torte that tastes of meat. This is purely a subjective opinion, and I am quite sure that there are Trader Joe's afficionados out there who understand the chocolate torte aesthetic better than I ever could. If so, then write. Time is ticking on...

Pps. Heather, I know you want this cake. It is yours. Email me about it if you need to be discreet.

Giveaway: Chocolate Almond Torte

I have one of those Trader Joe's Chocolate Almond Tortes, just bought it this afternoon. Just took a slice. Yak. Not my thing, but it's got to be somebody's. So if it's yours, let me know, and if you live in Brooklyn or are willing to travel for your TJ's Choc Torte, come and get it.

We have earned the new puppy that is coming with us to the White House

It's worth watching all 3:35 of this.

Dublin to New York, via feral cats and Greek comedy

It started with one cat, in Dublin. She was feral, she lived in the alleyways behind the house I was living in on Synge street, and she was the mother of a colony of feral cats that I got mixed up with.

She was a grey tabby, with one eye missing, so I called her One Eye. She had clearly had been in human hands to some degree for the first weeks or months of her life, because she understood - and seemed to enjoy - the etiquette of rubbing her head against the windowsill, and purring as a human stroked her. None of her offspring would ever let me do that to them. You've got to get a cat socialised to human touch within the first 6 - 8 weeks of their lives, or else they're untouchable forever (though I have heard some amazing (and bloody) stories of rescue and trust between human and feral cat).

So One Eye scoped me out and sussed me pretty fast. I was living in the basement of this house on Synge street, right across from the boys' school, and she slunk into my life and I began to buy chicken necks to feed her. I bought this stuff from a lovely butcher on Grantham street, who had kept the butcher shop for 40 years with his wife. Before that, it had been a haberdashers. Soon after I began to buy chicken necks from the butcher to feed One Eye and whoever else would come around, he sold the shop and it became a faux-Cuban tapas bar.

The bar is still there, and there's another one of the same name on George's street, where it has taken the place of one of the last greasy spoon cheapy cafes to close in Dublin. I used to go there every day in my last year in the town. Three euro fifty got you scrambled eggs on toast and a pot of tea, and I usually had a bit of a chat with the dishwasher who would come out from the kitchen when he saw me there. It was like the kind of place Francis Bacon might have frequented, had it been in London, full of all kinds of every dreg of Dublin life. Flanagans, it was called. A great place. The last time I went to eat there it was early 2005. Now, there's the Cuban place, which of course is not actually Cuban, but a sort of Cuban tribute restaurant.

The first Cuban joint, on Grantham street, was one of Dublin's first tastes of the Celtic Tiger. People came there to dance over their shrimp tapas on the weekends, and African drummers were brought in to jam along to the CDs on saturday nights. I popped in there from time to time, usually to howl like a wolf, and leave again. That seemed to be an acceptable addition to the climate there on the weekends, so I kind of liked the place.

One Eye and her brood, the neighbourhood feral cats, lived in the alleys between my flat and the Cuban place. At some point, I realised that I had taken them on. Pretty quickly, it was clear that One Eye was with kitten. When the kittens were born, it was freezing and snowy and I used to go around the back alleys with this bag of chicken necks and stand there in the cold for over an hour feeding them to her. One Eye would come as soon as I called her, and rub her head against my legs, purring, and I would give her a chicken neck. Then she had to jump up on the wall surrounding a trashed-out backyard behind one of those Camden street townhouse hotels, then leap up on a higher wall above it, all this with chicken neck in mouth, and climb unsteadily across a galvanised icy snowy roof, after which she dropped out of sight to wherever she had stowed her babies. After some time, she would return, and we repeated the process. We did this every night until they were able to come and get food themselves.

By the spring (which is February in Ireland) she began to bring the brood over. They were three raving beauties, with very distinct personalities. One was tortoiseshell, we called her Yak. She was very dignified and good natured, though of course not amenable to any kind of physical contact. But she would happily sit on the ledge outside the window, and have eye contact conversations with us, and spend the whole day there, knowing that she would get fed when she was hungry. She became a kind of surrogate mother to One Eye's later broods, and was intensely social. Other cats, especially smaller ones, loved her.

The other two ended up being called Purpee and Silvee. Purp was a kind of Kerry Blue colour, on the colour frontier where smokey blue meets purple, and he was a bit of a pain in the arse, very suspicious, out for all he could get, opportunistic, moved through life alone. Nervous. Edgy.

Silv was more circumspect than Yak, but magnificent nonetheless. A big silver haired tom, with intelligence in his eyes, and a kindliness that is unusual to find in a feral tomcat.

In a later litter came Billie, who was constantly vocal. She was a bit of a gorgeous brat who demanded everything all the time. The last major cat character from that tribe was a sweet little mischievous black and white scruff we called Bogie. These guys hung off of Yak all day long. Others came and went, I remember some of them, not all.

Things escalated. I made trips up Clanbrassil street to a butcher there, with a big backpack, and bought a vast quantity of pork hearts once a week, which I filled the fridge and freezer with, and microwaved in the evenings. My kitchen was turned into a bloodhouse (I was vegetarian at the time) but the cats got fed well every evening. I learned something about anatomy and developed a strong stomach.

My landlord found out I was feeding the cats and threatened to throw me out unless I stopped having contact with them in his backyard. I stopped feeding them from my window and brought the hearts over to the back alleys every night. I heard rumours that the neighbours were threatening to put down poison to kill the cats off, they thought they were a nuisance. Then Yak got pregnant.

The weather was mild, soft, rainy. She brought her kittens around to the garden, and deposited them under a wallcreeper by my window. She took care of them there. I could see that they were not well. So, one day, on one of her brief sojourns away from them, I gathered the five fluffballs up and put them in a box and brought them to the local vet. He took one look at them and condemned them to death. They had cat leukemia, he said, and cat flu, and would only spread the disease along. They hadn't a hope, he said. It was better this way. I was distraught, and he suggested that I let him put them down, and I walked away, back home, without Yak's kittens.

I got home, and sat in the kitchen, and waited. Yak came back, called her babies, searched frantically for them, called and called them, searched my face for information, kept calling through the day. I was in agony. She kept calling. I kept crying, trying to tell her what had happened. We kept going for hours. I was wretched, distraught. And then I remembered a phone number that had been given to me by a woman who I met a few months previously when a dog had followed me home and I had kept it in the flat overnight and met her in the park the next day, and she had found it a home.

She was a well-to-do middle aged woman who lived in Foxrock - a bit like Hellerup or Westchester - and spent her life and a lot of her money rescuing animals, mostly dogs, and giving them medical attention, and caring for them, trying to find them homes, keeping a lot of them in her own home, devoting her life to the care of abandoned things. I was sobbing down the line in the phone box at the corner of Harrington and Camden and South Richmond streets, and she heard me, and offered to help the cats, by giving me a trap so I could catch them one by one and get them neutered. At least we could keep the remaining colony stable, rather than a constantly expanding number of animals fighting for diminishing resources. I would do the legwork and she would pay for the whole thing.

So, for the next six months, that's what I spent my nights doing. Putting the trap out, sometimes catching one, sometimes not. It took six months to do them all. I would keep them in my flat overnight, bring them to the vet, collect them the next day, keep them in the cage, inside my flat for a couple of days to recover, then release them. Rinse. Repeat.

And then one day, this pregnant kittenish creature came in my window, and sat on my bed, and gave birth to a single kitten on my bed, right before my eyes. She belonged to a woman who lived next door, who never seemed to be around to take care of her cats, and so one by one, her cats found me. And one by one, I brought the cats, now three, to my parents' place in Clare, where they live today.

I just found this story in my drafts, while I was cleaning up my labels. Feels like it needs some kind of spit and polish ending, some kind of bringing to life of the life in these cats, the life that I lived with them, the difficulty of leaving them, of just abandoning them one day, because I had to live, because caring for them was taking up so much of my mind and heart, though I didn't know how leave them at the mercy of the winds. I think I did it gradually, stopped going around with the meat, but kept something handy at the window for whoever would come, to hell with the landlord.

Then I got a job spending eight hours a day trying to keep sixteen year olds quiet, in a study room of one of those nasty intensive grind schools, the job lasted three months until I could pretend to silence teenagers no more, and I had written a play based on the Greek comedy Lysistrata, and there had passed some tortuous conversations with a friend listening to my heart craving New York and that was the way it was, and the decision was at hand. A week later I was in New York.

Bed on the street outside our building

Here comes Lucy the Muppet

Design your own muppet. If you want to have her shipped to you it will cost $90, or you could use the site as a design tool and make your own. Here's what mine looked like.

Calling all humans who have not yet been consumed whole and alive by a snake

Please contribute your opinions on a life-and-death dilemma I posted over on Clusterflock today.

Mermaid on a toilet roll dispenser

Help this man's need to have plastic cows filling his home

I think we should all probably support this.

Now we are one

This is a picture of a small penguin who waited for two weeks for his mate to return from the sea to share egg sitting duties with him. Finally, hunger and desperation took over and he abandoned his beloved egg and headed off to save himself. Thank you, Big Picture, God dammit.