All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

irishmammies

Irish and Jewish mothers share a stereotype with one exception: Irish mothers don’t temper their sense of guilt. With all the love in the world, an Irish mother can simultaneously worship the ground her son walks on and act with a deeper sadism than the bastard offspring of Jeffrey Dahlmer and John Wayne Gacy.

Growing up, the brother and me were pretty spoiled – it was more Enid Blyton (without the casual racism) than Angela’s Ashes, but Mam wielded the wooden spoon of guilt like Zorro felling Spaniards.

When I went through a period of fibbing she tole me that my tongue would turn black and fall out if I lied. How did she know?

“A little bird told me”

Not only was Mammy a Gaelic Doctor Doolittle, she’d created a network of avian turncoats.

That little bird told on me. Every time. It must have been a stool pigeon.

Idiopathic tongue-ectomies aside, the best correction I got was herself telling me that boys who hit their mother would face the worst punishment ever. When they died, after their four-score and ten, and were buried the offending member would end up rising from the ground and become a gruesome, peeling tribute to the finale of Carrie.

“People will come from miles around,” she said, “to visit the slowly rotting hand and say ‘There lies a terrible child who was mean to his mother.’”

Of course, we laugh about it now, but I still hate that bird.

And the prize for participation goes to…

Pole position. via djryanie Pole position. via djryanie

I re-discovered something this weekend. I really hate go-karting.

We went on a team-building exercise at a go-karting track in Greenwich, which sounded like a good idea: we’d knock off work a couple of hours early, drive around a little bit, then start the weekend on a high. I’d done it before and it wasn’t too bad, even though the first time was outdoors in a rain storm.

But..

There’s a particularly mean trick memory can play – mostly on women to convince them to give birth more than once – after a suitable period of recovery you forget just how much an event hurt.

After getting dressed up in a set of overalls that compressed my testicles into a pancake-like mess, we got shown a badly produced video featuring a cast of Inbetweeners lookalikes giving thumbs up signs. Not feeling confident that either my health or safety was of paramount importance the race was on.

Sweet suffering Jesus was the race on. I think it took twenty seconds before I went from my starting position to last and I was whacked by all twelve other drivers on the way. Do you know how annoying a polite hand wave is after you’ve been smashed up the bottom? VERY! After the fifth crash I was plotting to bring in Sharia law and cut that bloody hand off.

Once everyone got out of the way, though, I started to get the hang of it and even managed a couple of laps without crashing. Then it happened. Lapped! I got side-swiped, broad sided, bumped, smashed, and crunched again! And every two or three laps for the rest of the humiliation… I mean race.

By twenty minutes in, Einstein’s famous description of relativity came to mind: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour.” I’d another ten minutes of stove to deal with and my arms had turned into the bingoest of wings, I’d bruises on the inside of either knee from bashing the steering column, and pride was but a distant and folorn memory.

Once the checkered flag came out and the ‘race’ ended I’d have kissed the marshall (with tongue), if only I wasn’t too busy rocking myself in that bucket seat reliving ALL OF THE POST TRAUMATIC STRESS. I had flashbacks to every Vietnam war movie made.

Coming last was inevitable. Being lapped five times by the next slowest driver? That was an achievement.

2012 in Alternate History

2012
Image by drspam via Flickr

According to io9, it’s more than just the end of the world that we need to worry about for 2012. Their predictions for this year include:

They missed out on a couple though:

  • Whitley Streiber (famous for being anally fingered by aliens) wrote about the boundaries between three parallel earths thinning in a parade of mental illness that would make David Icke blush;
  • Dan Brown’s apocalypse, which can only be preferable to reading any more of his dross;
  • Endless parkouring assassins jump around trying to give conspiracy theorists more to do than in any other year.

Still, it looks like the US isn’t going to get its first female president in time.

Five Reasons why Cyclists Love Cambridge

Christ's College, St Andrew's Street, Cambridg...
Image via Wikipedia

Laura Laker suggests that Cambridge is a model cycling city “with considerate drivers, dedicated bicycle parking and bike-friendly city planning.” Here are five real reasons cycling is so popular in the town:

  1. Cyclists can ignore red lights: It’s a rare cyclist that actually stops for a red light except when they’re in danger of being hit by a car.
  2. Keeping your hands in your pockets: Handlebars? Direction control? Who needs ’em?.
  3. Cycling on the pavement: Even with miles of cycle lanes, the footpath is perfect for traveling at high speed. Move it Grandma, I’ve got to get to my yoga class.
  4. Cycling two or three abreast: Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees. Never mind other road users when you’re carrying on your conversation. Of course that nail polish looks stunning.
  5. Chatting on a mobile phone: Unlike those evil motorists using a mobile on a push bike has no effect at all and, best of all, if you get hit it’s always their fault.

‘Course, you might say pedestrians and motorists have it coming.

Jackboots and Shocktroops Remind me of You

All Kinds of EverythingRosemary “Dana” Scallon – the Irish version of Rick Santorum – has decided to try to run for the presidency again. Obviously losing the race in 1997, winning the Eurovision Song contest, and pandering to an anti-progressive base are the only skills needed by a head of state and guardian of the Constitution.

I ran into her in Rome in 2000, which made one of the less sober members of our group really happy. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. International,” he yelled.

I don’t know why she ran off. Maybe she didn’t like being addressed as “Ms.”

The Illusion of Dolphin Sex

You’re probably familiar with the Young Girl-Old Woman illusion, which was first seen on a German postcard in 1888. Or a the Necker Cube, where the image’s perspective spontaneously changes.

Take a look at the USA Network logo:

If you don’t see a dolphin performing oral sex on a smurf then you need to contact a mental health professional.

J’suis seul dans ma cuisine/Et je bois du café

In the early nineties (1985 in Ireland years) my uncle shipped a percolating coffee pot over from America, which sat in the middle of the kitchen as we tried to figure out what this Cray supercomputer of a kitchen implement was for. It looked like a giant kettle with piping that led up to a mesh basin, which is where the coffee went. Up until then coffee came in a jar, tasted like willow bark, and was only every drunk under protest. Even Anthony Head’s on-and-off romance over a jar of Gold Blend couldn’t make it any more palatable. Gold Blend? We weren’t made of money.

Once we’d found some ground coffee (what do you mean Arabica – I want coffee) the pot was watered, loaded, and put on the gas. Within ten minutes of hissing, pffting, and all manner of steampunk noises this Dr. Snuggles-like machine produced what I can only describe as stimulant heaven. No more Mellow Birds for me… until the mesh corroded.

Ever since, like a heroin addicted J.R. Hartley jonesing for one last fix, I’ve tried to find a replacement. Times have changed and all you can find are french presses, cafetieres, and coffee makers. Until now!

Thanks to the Argos of the middle classes I’ve found a replacement.

I haven’t slept since.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph, St. Patrick, St. Colmcille and all the holy hosts of angels help me in my hour of need.

Two months ago Ang and I struck a deal: I could let my ten-year old self run wild at Jodrell Bank if we spent the Wednesday before the Royal Wedding at Alton Towers. I thought I was on to a winner there, I loved roller coasters, I didn’t have to watch a wedding, and I got to play with big science: what could go wrong? I hadn’t been on a really big roller coaster in ages which is why this was the result:

This is what comes from not having a fully rounded classical education. I could have learned from poor old Dr. Faustus.

Picture the scene – 1985, days before a bedraggled Irishman put on a little benefit show for Ethiopia, nine-year old me was brought to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. This was the year the Space Invader opened, a black hole ride that I’d just seen on John Craven’s Newsround and I wanted to go on. Dad hates roller coasters so I told him it was just a gentle indoor ride, I begged, I wheedled, I got my own way. Imagine a man terrified of all fast rides, his young firstborn, and a single car climbing up in the pitch dark. That was the day I learned my first swearwords.

Ang just won free passes to another amusement park and this was my reaction:

Damn, Karma exists.

And she’s a bitch.

What do you mean there are books other than Twilight?

Whether Better Book Titles took the idea from yourmonkeycalled or came up with it independently, it’s my favourite Tumblr of the moment.

A couple of weeks ago I overheard a WH Smith employee telling a customer that he’d looked up the author of a book and it was William Golding. The customer was looking for Lord of the Flies. That’s right, he had to look up the title of Nobel Prize winning, thrice adapted, on the GCSE, Junior Cert 1954 classic allegory Lord of the Flies.

Needless to say, I posted this on Twitter and FaceBook and got accused of elitism and snobbery. I’m not saying that someone working in a bookshop needs to know the author of every book under the sun, but a basic grounding in the classics couldn’t hurt.

Good job the ConDem coalition is shutting down public libraries, eh?