I promise, I resolve, I will blow the cobwebs off this dusty old internet hole over the coming weeks, to keep it ticking over so that the moss doesn't grow over it and the squatters don't move in. rad owls: because, why not? As I explained before, I've been dividing my time between work and writing fiction, and I'm hovering in an anxious limbo, where [...]
Of all the dumb shit my father has gotten up to in his back garden, last Friday's dumb shit was the dumbest shit yet. And before anyone calls me out for being a bit hard on the man here, I'll add that I was very much complicit in the dumb shit. A couple of weeks ago, the monstrous leylandii trees which towered over my family home for three decades were cut down by a tree surgeon hired by the local residents' committee. The endeavour left the back garden looking very baldy and grim, though I'm sure summer's [...]
Of all the dumb shit my father has gotten up to in his back garden, last Friday's dumb shit was the dumbest shit yet. And before anyone calls me out for being a bit hard on the man here, I'll add that I was very much complicit in the dumb shit. A couple of weeks ago, the monstrous Leylandii trees, which towered over my family home for most of their twenty five years of life, were cut down by a tree surgeon hired by the local residents' committee. The endeavour left the back garden looking extremely baldy [...]
I'm acting upon a dream I had last night where, I shit not, popular Irish music blogger Niall Byrne was trapped within the trunk of a Leylandii tree in my back garden (turning into wood like something out of this radiohead video ) and we had a lengthy conversation about music blogging. So here I am, driven by my vision of Nialler, trying to dust off the compost heap for the second time this year. In the meantime, I've still been writing. Here's something I wrote for Siren magazine, who have relaunched [...]
Walking to the shop in Ranelagh I noticed a touch of Spring in the air. A few small things - the bright sunshine, a small breeze running over a pygmy daffodil in a garden, and construction workers laying down tarmac in the main street - heralded the change. So, I took out my phone and texted to myself "write a blog about Spring being in the air" - because that's how us bloggers perceive the world, as potential content. Then, at that precise point, when I was thinking of new life and regeneration, what should roll slowly through the main [...]
Walking to the shop in Ranelagh I noticed a touch of Spring in the air. A few small things - the bright sunshine, a small breeze running over a pygmy daffodil in a garden, and construction workers laying down tarmac in the main street - heralded the change. So, I took out my phone and texted to myself "write a blog about Spring being in the air" - because that's how us bloggers perceive the world, as potential content. Then, at that precise point, when I was thinking of new life and regeneration, what should roll slowly through the main [...]
Suddenly, coloured lights swing up through the dark... a silver flurry of ribbon and paper falls from the ceiling and over the upturned faces of teenagers who dance awkwardly with their arms... here's a glam rock drumbeat and some descending guitar chords... Gary Glitter begins to sing... HELLO, HELLO, IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK. gently, we sail back out onto blog lake I took a couple of months' break [...]
Hi all, I am going to take a break from the blog until January or February. I am working on another writing project that is taking up all of my spare time at the moment. Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for coming back if ye come back. See yis on the flipside of Oh Thirteen. Me IRL
That was quite a glut of fiction posts. Thanks for putting up with them, especially if you come here for music stuff. Starting tonight, I'm going to lash out a few posts about music. The only thing is, I'm so used to writing in the third person now that it is hard to get back in the mode. What I am going to do is take advice from a great book I bought a few weeks ago called The Art of the Personal Essay . In its introduction, the editor [...]
That was quite a glut of fiction posts. Thanks for putting up with them, especially if you come here for music stuff. Starting tonight, I'm going to lash out a few posts about music. The only thing is, I'm so used to writing in the third person now that it is hard to get back in the mode. What I am going to do is take advice from a great book I bought a few weeks ago called The Art of the Personal Essay . In its introduction, the editor [...]
He went to Whelans straight after his shift in the care home. He found Phelim and The Kev sitting at the table next to the open fire. The reflection of the flames twisted and glimmered over their pints of Smithwicks. Barry fancied he had never seen a more welcoming scene in his life. “The Magtail,” shouted Phelim. “Clocked off and ready to buy for the dole monkeys.” “You’re lucky tonight. Because I am very happy to see the pair of you,” said Barry. He unzipped his parka and hung it over a chair, feeling his muscles and his thoughts turn [...]
What was the fucken story with the cough syrup anyway? Then he remembered. He had bought a bottle of it the day before because his chest felt tight. He scanned the room and spotted the empty bottle lying on its side beside the wastepaper basket heaped high with glass and drained energy drink cans. The entire lot, gone? He must have thought it was booze. It was some kind of green stuff by the looks of his sheet which was spattered, abstract expressionist style, with arcing strings of it. The sheet and its sediment was fast becoming a geologic record [...]
[adaptation of a post I wrote long ago] I walked from one end of Kells to the other after twelve last Sunday night. I was followed home at a distance of about 10 yards by a bandy legged dude eating curry chips which I could smell over the cold air. He sang the instrumental intro to that monstrous Fratellis song to himself, the one that goes "derp derpee derp derpee derpee derp", except in Kells accent, so there were lohhhts of long vowehhhhlllsss on the derps. [...]
[this is a lot less heavy in tone than yesterday's bit, which was, erm, quite the downer] “Are you on yokes?,” asked Ross. “Maybe I am,” laughed Jean, marvelling at how liquid the words sounded. She leapt on top of the duvets and pinned Ross under them, giggling as he squirmed beneath, his wariness now flaking away to reveal embers of warmth. He can’t help himself, she thought. He loves me. “Stop wriggling, ya maggot. Let me in to you.” Trying his best to maintain his grump-face, Ross peeled away enough of [...]
[another prose fragment from my nanowrimo. I promise funnies and a music round-up next week] Trying to distract himself, he rifled through the junk in his laptop bag, through the empty blister packs of antidepressants, the pieces of papers with fragments of prose scribbled on them, the haribo sweet wrappers and the layers of grainy sediment until he found his little MP3 player. He plugged in his headphones and began listening to the first song that came on shuffle, a looping instrumental meditation on tiny gradations of loss. [...]
The journeys down the dark lengths of those December mornings were Barry’s least favourite part of his new job in the hospice. His commute comprised of three parts; a forty-five minute bus journey; a twenty-five minute train journey; and a final half-hour walk along the edge of a busy new road, past discarded things and flattened crows, past a bleached memorial for a boy who died in a car accident, and eventually past the high metal fence that surrounded the complex of residences and offices that contained his workplace. [...]
I've waffled long and hard about Dan Bejar on these pages, and about his knotty songs that can sometimes disappear up his arse but which are more often redeemed by an unappropriated romantic sincerity that is all too rare. Live, with his band Destroyer, he is great value. I saw him at ATP years ago and came away from the gig converted (who'd have thunk it, I thought: the cranky oddball from the New Pornographers has a big back catalogue of his own. And I plundered the fuck out of it with enthusiasm). [...]
Once he found the strength and motivation to leave his bed for short periods, Barry found a place on the ward to sit. Situated between the smoking cage and the ward’s door was a little alcove with a water cooler, a lumpen leather chair, and a small TV with rabbit ears. Nobody ever seemed to sit in this alcove, probably because the TV only picked up three channels. Barry made the place his own, whiling away long hours with his scribble pad and his books. It was not until the second time he sat there that he noticed the painting. [...]
I'm doing the nanowrimo thing this month so the blog will either have a lot of writing (because writing one thing makes writing other stuff easier) or less writing (because I'll be spent). I'm not sure yet...but if any of you are doing nanowrimo, I'm all for making buddies on it. little break in Kells Community School was always a bit of craic [...]
Last weekend saw me emerge blinking and pale from my Northside box-room to take a train down to Waterford to visit my good friend Frank, a man so filled with curiosity and enthusiasm that being around him is like taking good medicine. We took the car to Kilkenny and walked a forest trail along the river Nore. What a tonic. We picked mushrooms, climbed mouldy tree trunks and even ended up chatting to a pair of nine-year-old boys for the twenty seconds it took for us to realise how incredibly ropey it was for two thirty-one-year-old men to do this [...]
Asleep on the compost heap
NSFW: Miley Cyrus shows off her BANGIN TANKINI BOD!
Doldrums - "Holographic Sandcastles"
A Little Something For Everyone At EDC New York
