Thursday, December 30, 2010

Hardly New Year

There's one thing more annoying than hearing "Happy New Year evry1 lez hope itsa gud wun!?LOLCASM xXxo", and that’s "Happy New Years Eve....'s Eve" which is what today happens to be(and yes, someone, with a seemingly fully functioning brain, the same model that invented the light bulb, that built and filled the Louvre, that is writing this post, just said this to me). It's moments like this that make me want to blog-rant 'till my face melts.

Now it's not my intention to be a procrastinating Grinch that only stumbles out a week later to kill the refreshing-new-beginning vibes, but to every Who that forwards this fruitless wish on the opening of a fresh calendar, I fail, scratch that, I choose not to comply with you. I mean, "Happy Christmas", fair enough, "Happy Birthday", fair enough, but to wish a whole year of happiness? Too hopeful. It's too rare nowadays to even have a whole day of wow-what-an-amazing-tree kind of optimism. Even then, they usually spring up on the most unexpected days, which is why hopeful thinking can only go downhill. As if nobody ever got a visit from Aunty Climax on the hyped-up holidays. That bitch. We created her with all our "Christmas is the best day of the year" and "I cannot wait to turn eighteen" and the most frequent and coincidentally most impossible, "Happy New Year, 2Kwhatever to be the BEST YET"

In general, you’ll get the same amount of highs and lows as you did last year and the year before that, give or take a few laughs and tears. New Year’s Eve is just a mark on a clock that we made up when someone realised, “oh look, the sun is in the same place it was 365 days ago, let’s have a drink to celebrate” If it were as socially acceptable, we’d celebrate the beginning of every hour. (Now you’re definitely getting ideas, provided you’re Irish)

Then there’s the New Year’s resolution. Yes, just to add to the high expectations, we like to make ourselves impossible promises. One of us gives up smoking, another starts a diet, the youngsters vow to eat more vegetables, I might as well promise to give up yawning and grow double my height. Why give yourself your own word, knowing that you most definitely never have or never will be “a man of it”? Hands up whose last resolution lasted the year? Hands up who can even remember what it was? Thought so.

So go ahead, wish me a slightly more smiley than average New Year, with an extra laugh or six. And if you’re going to make an resolution, make it so impossible that people will laugh, only then will it benefit anyone. It’ll also add the extra few laughs to their New Year, making it a happier one, then making you’re wishes come true-ish. Someone great once should have said, “Go to the party dressed all in black, then the biscuit will taste better.”

A terribly uneventful and reasonably better year to you all,

Cloudy.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

THE 10 COMMASSMENTS.

1. Thou shalt not worship any other ass before me.
2. Thou shalt not grab my ass in vain.
3. Thou shalt respect thy neighbour's ass.
4.Thou shalt ‘drop it like it's hot’ when the bitches got an attitude.
5. Thou shalt not lie about liking big butts.
6. Thou shalt celebrate the patron day of the Ass Wednesday.
7. Thou slinky shall go A-DOING-DOING-DOING on seeing my ass.
8. Thou shalt not witness the ASSCLIPSE (ass-eclipse) without adequate eye protection.
9. Upon asking "WHAT WOULD THE MASSIAH DO?", thou shalt always shake that ass for me, shake that ass for me.
10. -insert word of god here-


© Michelle 17A.A. (After Ass)

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Eighteen Candles.

Good God. One cold cup of coffee, one even colder shower (thanks for everything snow), and the first sleep in about 30 hours (in which I woke up not knowing where I was or what time it was or whether last night was a dream or WHA) are conquered, and the details of my 18th birthday are now gradually returning like pins & needles. Veni, Vidi, Vici.
For the week leading up to Friday the 17th, the weather was predicted to be cold but tamely and THANKFULLY snowless. Then at about four o’ clock on The Big Day it was, in the words of Family Guy weatherman Ollie, SNOWING SIDEWAYS. The panicky texts began to trickle in as the white bastard jizzed over everything, putting parents in the risk of losing their lives and tolerance of letting their resident teens out. I was at this point (approx. 19.30 hours) convinced the whole thing would be A Winter’s Fail. Little did I know that 29 mad wans would take an overpriced bus AND an even more overpriced taxi, risk their limbs driving around hills, fall UP hills, walk two hours warmed only by whiskey and essentially beg, steal or borrow their way to my humble and well-decorated abode. It is no exaggeration to say that I’ve never meant the phrase I-cannot-thank-you-enough more than right now.
What followed was a chaotic Van-Gogh-swirl (see above photo) of UNREAL, something all the more positively heightened because I really didn’t think it was possible that it could happen.
I can’t quite put into words what it meant to see the frankly otherworldly effort my friends made, and although not everyone I wanted there could (100% understandably) make it, I was very much saved from spending my 18th birthday burying myself in DVDs, ice-cream and rum and cranking till I tripled myself.
AHAHAHA I laughed when I wrote that
To say this birthday brought me closer to my friends and made me appreciate everything I have is an understatement.
And this is why it was (and I know I’m somewhat obligated to say this) the best one yet, both because of the above and because how the plain imperfect perfection of it sums up how I feel about everything good in life right now. Like any standard high-white-balance-and-flash weheartit photo, what ever is spontaneous, unconventional and wonderfully flawed, is usually the most beautiful in the end.
And indie.
Anyway, what other night could result in a dancefloor smeared in snow, malibu, bodily fluids and the aftermath of our cake war, making the room look like the monkey paintings out of the lion king? Which domino-ed on to create some of The BEST cartoon falls I have ever seen or experienced first-hand. Which in turn ballooned on to a pretty class singing circle time, including such classics as a racist cover of Blackbird, Something, Real Love, Hamlet:L, Iris, Thaz Aul Right, our insane Ceolchoirm na Nollag setlist (re-enacting the trombone solo and harmonies on both Fairytale of New York and Sneachta Ag Titim respectively) and some folksy shit aswell.:)
Images of the stairs getting an encouraging lap-dance, that Spanish girl being forced into the snow, more than wood being burned in the fire and a guest’s surprise entrance around half ten post-crying phone call with signature pineapple in tow can’t quite leave my brain..we are indeed as someone said today, “a colourful bunch of legends”.
It was a surreal and twoderful time and something that affected and submerged me so completely that I didn’t even realize how emotional I was the next morning when saying goodbye until Marianne said “Oh god don’t start crying”. And as I opened my kiss-and-cake-torn mouth to say “What choo talkin bout de Leaster”, I realized that yes, I did indeed have tears in my eyes. Because it had just hit me in that pins-and-needles way just how Christmas-miraculously great it was.
Plus the non-metaphysical presents were totally Boss (is that phrase from Scott Pilgrim? I don’t know anymore..) and the cards were just plain sob-worthy. From what other people can you get the reaction of: “I find that hard to believe” when you answer No to the question “So have you ever smoked drugs?” or just getting asked do you practive tap-dancing professionally. And I think one of the most genuinely beautiful & plain simplistic moments of my life was around 5.30am, when I slid across to a cutely inebriated friend and sang from the “Home” lines up to the chorus in time with Stornoway’s Fuel Up while she smiled perfectly and looked at us appreciatively. Cinematic ta fuck.
That is, I think, something important. The crux, or part of it. Like romance and those “Home” lines, happiness and exquisite nights like these cannot be constructed. They just occur and form themselves, emerging from your own feelings and a few feet of snow.
So really, I cannot thank ye enough.

Friday, December 17, 2010

That Day.

I don't think I'll ever forget the moment Conor J O'Brien stooped down to whisper in the ear of the security guy standing beside me. Even though I moved, being the awkward little ninny that I am, he was inches from my face. I thought about touching him. But that might have been weird. I just tangled Martha's leg in ecstasy instead (thanks for that babez).
Conor needn't have pyhsically touched me, though (although it would have been nice). Clichéd as it may seem, the guy's got talent. Tangible, moving, harrowing but beautiful bucketloads of it.

I've left gigs before wishing the performers had spoken more with the crowd during the show - but Villagers are no ordinary group. When the brilliant Mr O'Brien did speak, it was really funny and good-humoured, which was kind of surprising seeing as the man pours his whole being into every song. But the songs really said it all.

I saw a bird-like tuft of hair off stage and my lungs nearly collapsed. He walked out, picked up his tiny ukelele/guitar, somehow made infinitely cooler with black tape that would look blasphemous on any other instrument. He played 'Twenty Seven Strangers' on his own, slower than the album version. He bounced to push his syrupy voice from belt to falsetto.

Then the band came on AND BOIZ WHAT A BAND. Seriously, if Aiden Grimshaw was too intense for the X Factor, these dudes could send the whole Great British public into heart failure with one number. The bassist moved around like an underwater gazelle. Keyboard Man's expressions made me well up. The whole band moved as if in syncronised slow-motion. And then suddenly Conor would start to scream and eerie chaos would ensue.

Excited fans shouted "GO ON CONOR, YA MADMAN" and "CAN I'VE YAR CHRISTMAS JUMPER?".
Conor asked why "all these people" were there... Not just those slightly odd people; it seemed like he wasn't quite accustomed yet to all these people standing in front of him having paid to see him and singing along to his songs. He said they had played Cork before 'but not like this'. His incredulity is hard to believe when you're standing less than a metre away from him as he sings one heart-wrenching line after another. I couldn't help but wonder what he expected when he decided to record the songs he had been touring. Do people really need to listen to 'To Be Counted Among Men' 50 times before they fall in love with it?

In fact, I think the best might really be to come from the valiant Villagers. Hearing the really amazing songs from 'Becoming a Jackal' was exhilarating enough, but the new songs literally took my breath away. The lyrics, the chords, the emotion... and they do that day after day! It kind of makes me sore...
For fear of repeating myself, I'll steal Conor J's take on this one:

"In the carnival is a sunlit stage
Never in the dark of a morning failed
Your own audience will decide your fate
In a carnival on a sunlit stage."


£

Monday, December 13, 2010

Rest-less

there is no future. there is no past. do you see? time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.





Saturday, December 11, 2010

Here's To The Next Hundred/Eighteen.

She's got you thinking this is how you’re supposed to be. Well it's not. We're young. We’re supposed to drink too much. We're supposed to have bad attitudes and shag each other's brains out. We are designed to PARTAY. This is it. Yeah so a few of us will overdose or go mental. But Charles Darwin said you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And that's what it's all about. BREAKING EGGS. And by eggs I do mean, get twatted on a cocktail of class A’s. If you could just see yourselves..it breaks my heart. You’re wearing cardigans!
We had it all. We fucked up bigger and better than any generation that came before us. WE WERE SO BEAUTIFUL!
We're screw-ups. I’m a screw-up. And I plan to be a screw-up until my late twenties, maybe even my early thirties. And I will shag my own mother before I let her..or anyone else take that away from me!

Friday, December 10, 2010

All those highs and the lows and the to's and the fro's, they left me dizzy.

AKA What It Meant To Be Seventeen, yo.
What? The kids like it when you use their lingo.

Well its the eve of PURELY TECHNICAL adulthood and I can't help but retrospect the lymph outa the nodes of experiences that have polka-dotted the past year. I mean it started off (well, nine days in) with PAUL MCCARTNEY.
I remember watching QI last december when I was sixteen and hearing thou-shalt-not-question-Stephen-Fry saying that "scientifically, seventeen is the best age to be" to the shouts of denial from his subjects. On the brink of kidulthood and possessing just enough responsibility to be able to go both chicken oriental, and indeed, fucking mental? Still clinging to the fragments of childhood and swiftly coming to terms with the dichotomy of worldly naiivety and the need to grow Grow GROW?
Oh Alan Davies, how wrong you were.
I think the biggest thing I've learned this year, as well as today actually..OMG I JUST REMEMBERED HOW BRILLIANT MY LAST DAY OF LEGALHOOD WAS..
anyway, i'll start that sentence again. I think the biggest thing I've learned this year, as well as today, from such a spectrum of events, feelings, people, encounters (both brief and otherwise, kathy), decisions, journeys and challenges galore is how Above-Everything important it is to extract something valuable from every experience. To sweep a few droplets of oil off the surface of the water below and make a difference to yourself with those golden spheres of knowledge. Or maybe that should be baby out of bathwater? Well I've certainly learned to turn a phrase..
It all comes down to you, no-one can see your thought process but it should shine through in a way, in other ways I s'pose.
Its not unlike when you draw an eye and, unless you're Pee-Wee Hurley, you don't draw a flat, fully outlined diamond shape, you assume the viewer knows what an eye looks like and you rely on minimalism and other things to make it look 3D and realistic. If that makes sense at all. You don't need to shriek "The philosophy of 16th century monks really speaks to me!" to the masses on a daily basis, its more that if you fall in love with a state of mind, you have to compress it, pocket it and then apply it. Sticking to your metaphorical guns, basically. (Hello Brazil)

In a way the wonderfulness today summed up all those things, that is why I bursted-out earlier..Outburst? Geddit? Sí?
So anyway, thank you everyone..God that sounds so cheesy, but. Yeah. I wish I could stay in Seventeen Village forever but I can't. So the next best thing would be to gather up everything I've learned into a gypsy/topshop handkerchief, knot the bitch up on a stick and hit the road. Life is a college lecture, its not supported by permanent walls but the good thing about that is that its not enclosed with boundaries either.

So fuel up. Lets give it a whirl.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

if you're having girl problems

i feel bad for you son,
i got 99 problems but censoring
already general opinions ain't one.