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

For Ross

Beep. Feathers.

I used to write long things here a lot more. And then I started pouring that energy into songwriting, Clusterflock comments and Twitter. It moves around. I'm in Ireland again for an as yet indeterminate time and I'm thinking vaguely in the direction of a writing project to do while I'm here.

Meanwhile I am freezing and feeling kind of vacuumed. It is pouring rain and I can't take Tar for a walk until there is a gap in it. I've just compiled a list of some rocking old posts, I hope you enjoy them...

Releasing the Monkey
Milk Cartons
A Cockroach Cautionary
Love on the Carrer de Verdi
You can take the fear out of the mouse but you can't take the mouse out of the cat's mouth
Stories on the Eve of Thanksgiving
Gonna kill you, mister mosquito man

Dearg Doom

How's about this for something real...



Now listen to the first third of that U2 song again. It's really like a high octane Hollywood Blockbuster of a song: absolutely nothing in it of any real feeling or interest but lots of forward momentum and recycled familiar sounds from their own past and classic rock history, without the song itself taking flight at all. The song sounds enslaved. Like it doesn't really want to be at all.

I think it is true that there is only so much megawealth and success that an artist can have and be able to keep making music that has profound resonance and intensity and interest. Unless they are really very good, of course.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy The Horslips. There's that bollocky youtube delay on the visuals but it's a reasonable enough audio.

Get on your earplugs

U2 released their latest song yesterday. Have you heard it? It's like the sound of repackaged bad debt. And this is the stuff they've been doing with Lanois and Eno. After they threw out the stuff they did with Rick Rubin.

This is about as clicheed as Bono's usual rants about being from the workingclass northside suburb of Glasnevin and blah blah blah about kings and greatness.

Dog life

Profound.

Steam engines meet good beer

on the real ale train.

My Macbook lying in state

The fox is one of those paid mourners. I'm not sure his heart is in it.

It was a one and a half year old Macbook, died while having itself cleared of space, so that it wouldn't die.  This is a terrible pity.

My computer just died.

My computer just died. All of it.

Happy new year, something magnificent!

Cake, lots of it

I went to my friend India's house yesterday, and this is what we ate. That chocolate cake was the size of two heads, and contained stout! Each slice was a cake. Sensational. We drank tea in very civilised fashion, and then a friend of hers came with some prosecco and champagne. Hurrah!

Mister Pinter went to Oslo

This is probably the finest performance that will ever be given of one of the seminal works of contemporary literature. God bless Mister Pinter.

(Click on either windows media or real player to play. It's 46 minutes and you will probably squirm with the intensity of it. I did.)

Katine women

Anne Enright visits Katine, the African village whose stories are being heard regularly in the Guardian, and writes this beautiful thing.

The Guardian is also sponsoring its own aid appeal for Katine. You can donate through the site.

Harold

Harold Pinter died yesterday. What a fierce fucking genius. Such timing.

WInter Wonderland, New York

It's been raining hard today, turning all the snow and ice into slush and slipperier ice. But this is what it looked like upstate last weekend.