Viral
Blogger’s messed up posting turns up on Metafilter. My archive cuckoos have been nesting in random Blogspot sites.

“Strangely, the Dervala Hanley page also turns up at another completely unrelated blogspot, andyjacobs.blogspot.com. I suspect al Qaeda. Or a rogue ftp process.

Mark is cheery: ‘Great, now the CIA has your name next to “al Qaeda”’

Tiny wireless chocolate &eacuteclair
Vindigo 2.0: The most popular location-based service in the US is now available for handheld cakes.

The Enema Within
By late Sunday, after two weekends at the office, intensive colonic irrigation was more appealing than reality.

“At least I could contribute to the increasingly competitive enema discussions. Someone had always passed something harder, brighter, more bizarre. Margaret’s chopsticks had unearthed some gristle, about a foot long, and hard, black pellets. She was so impressed she took a photograph. A few chalets away, Mez had passed “rubbery brown, fat worms” with a strange purple glaze, which she insisted on showing to me in her bathroom. But the clear winner was Anthony’s 22-year-old marble. Perhaps the most bizarre thing, which I didn’t appreciate until days later, is that it all seemed perfectly normal at the time.”

“Colema” treatment sounds like psychotherapy. Distasteful until you do it, at which point you can’t stop blabbing about it. And then you feel sorry for everyone else carrying around a lifetime’s worth of impacted shit.

A word in your ear

The Astoria turf wars continue. Charlie, Claire’s landlord, has taken to taping long notes to her mailbox and her front door. He is convinced that she is maliciously dripping gallons of water on the floor of the bathroom, causing the ceiling below to chip and sag. The truth is the plumbing is as creaky as he is, and the shower tiles are spongy with old age. Still, the trembly notes keep appearing.

‘Claire. Please COOPERATE. If you do not understand please CALL ME. The hallway ceiling is RUINED. Please TURN OFF the shower by turning the middle tap when you finish.’

Claire fantasizes about walking out on her deposit, leaving the bathtub overflowing for a whole weekend.

It could be worse. None of Caitr&iacuteona’s landlords in Bosnia understood the concept of renting. In their minds, they kept full rights to her apartment, leaving her an unwanted houseguest of sorts. She would come home from the grim work of reuniting Srebrenica families with the bodies of their massacred men to find her apartment thick with the smell of mutton fat. Her landlady used to let herself in to cook lunch for the family, perhaps even entertain, while Cait was out.

Ashcroft sings
Whenever I get embarrassed by Ireland’s medieval ways, I shall play this. Michael McDowell (Ireland’s Attorney General, who drafted the latest abortion referendum) has a long way to go.

At 27, women are at their most beautiful, and rockstars kill themselves.

Jimi Hendrix.
    Janis Joplin.
       Kurt Cobain.

Justine Frischmann, who should know, speculates on the rockstars in The Observer.

“From the drugs, she’s learnt humility, she says. She also watched Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie coming off tour and being unable to feed himself or have normal relationships with people in the street – the result of ‘having to behave like a pop star for 20 years through thick and thin, with all the neurosis that goes with it and all the paranoia that goes with it and all the drugs that go with it’. At this point, she knew that she ‘had never been cut out to be a pop star’.

‘I’ve learnt that success can interfere with creativity. In a big way. And on a personal level, I’ve learnt that my sanity’s more important than success. And that I actually get a great deal more pleasure out of small things in life than big things.’

Isn’t that what your twenties is about, I wonder. In pop years, Frischmann is now said to be 33.

‘Yeah, it almost seems like your twenties is about having everything you ever thought was true proved wrong. And I think that’s why so many people kill themselves at 27. You just can’t take any more of finding out how wrong you were! And then, by the time you reach your early thirties, you find out that it doesn’t really matter, because it all keeps going on and what you think about it is not really that important. It’s just a matter of trying to make some sense of the small things. Stop trying to control everything and let it happen. Also, your ambitions change, become less to do with trophies, I think. That said, I don’t feel that anyone could have survived what we went through. I went into it with a really good head on my shoulders, very stable, quite smart, quite aware of the pitfalls because I’d seen them around me… there was no way of keeping people mentally healthy. It was impossible.’

When I was small, I had a red velour jacket with ‘27’ stitched to it in big blue letters. It never occurred to me I would be 27 one day—that was as old as Mum, for God’s sake. Now it occurs to me that I never will be 27 again. But that’s fine.

I received this wish from a friend today:

“I hope, with a fervent burst, that you are creating for yourself a life that is rich and full.”

What an exhortation! I was cranky and sad, but now I have something to live up to. And I offer the same wish to you.

Have you heard of Smartees? These worthy creatures are role models for today’s career-minded girls, much like Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen. They also provide endless snickering amusement for men in early middle age, should you fall into that category.

I don’t think I would have wanted a Smartee. The pain of getting a Sindy doll instead of a sexy Barbie for Christmas 1979* is still fresh. Sindy had doughy features and probably a pear-shaped English ass, if I remember correctly. Barbie was pert and glamorously American. Plus, Sindy’s dresses were made out of the same material as our living room curtains, a fact which struck me as suspicious even at the time.
However, judging by the earnest Smartees Q&A, the recipients of these dolls are not such ungrateful wretches. These nine year olds are also far more serious about their careers than I am. Except this one:

Dear Ashley,

Are all the Smartees girls?
Are their ever going to be guys? And will you make another Smartee?
The smartest people in my school are guys.

Love,
Katie

Dear Katie,

All of us wanted to write you back because we thought your question was very important! Anyone can be smart, Katie, so don’t worry too much about who is “smartest” at your school.
Whether it’s girls or guys, what’s really important is that YOU dream, study hard and go to college. Then you can become ANYTHING you want to be!
Take it from us – nothing can stop you if you work as hard as you can!
You can do it. We believe in you!!

Friends Forever,
Ashley, Destiny, Vicky and Emily

*Perhaps I should rename this journal Christmas presents I didn’t get.

How come they can get one and I can’t?!!!