I hate the arts

My poor sister. I bleed for her. She is currently rehearsing the part of MOUTH in Samuel Beckett's Not I in her college in Cork. Click on the link. Go on, click it! That's the whole play. It involves Sally sitting in a chair with her whole body in darkness and only her poor little mouth lit up by a spotlight. It is HORRIBLE sounding. She has to learn the whole thing off and it's dreadfully boring and stupid and makes absolutely NO sense. And she has to wear horrible black clothes and no one gets to see her face which makes it even more awful and stupid. She owns nothing black so robbed loads of bits of mine. I tried to entice her into wearing these cute pointy black flats and a skinny little belt but she said: 'No, Lucy. It has to be plain and simple. No extras. No pretty. No cute. Just simple.'

Beckett! What hast thou done to my sister?!?

I...can't...breathe...

The Kooks - Naive

Tortured, tangled heart

Yesterday I had an interview. You know what that means. A JOB. Out came the vile interview suit and vile interview shoes. And hold-ups. Bleugh. Guess what they asked me?

‘Have you read any books recently and what did you think of it or them?’

Books! That’s all them shagging librarians ever think about. Ever go to the cinema, people? Watch telly? They’re so obvious it’s embarrassing. Naturally I flubbed it. I breezed through the rest of the thing, gabbing on happily about the democratisation of literature and having a community forum for this and that and the transience of something and the marginalisation of something else- I can’t rightly remember what I said now but at the time it was brilliant. Interview gold. And up comes the easiest, dumbest question ever and I practically swallow my tongue.

‘Lucky Jim’ I finally spat out. ‘Liked it.’ That’s not so bad, surprisingly it’s actually true. Yes my critical analysis isn’t exactly going to be scaring the shit out of Harold Bloom anytime soon but hey, he’s more than likely not in the running for this particular job.

But I couldn’t leave it there. For some reason interview-genius* Lucy decides that Lucky Jim isn’t impressive enough. ‘And Ulysses. Liked that too.’

Well done, shithead. No one, bar poncey literature students and maybe Declan Kiberd or someone, has just read Ulysses. And it’s a lie. I skipped right to the dirty bits and found them wanting. Pah. This is why I avoid carrying out conversations sober.


*Ha. Sometimes I spell right, sometimes I spell not so right.

Mother's Pride

How was your Mothers day? Mine was horrendous. I woke up half pissed and fully clothed in Aoife’s bed and had to ring the mother for a lift home. Me and the mother are fighting at the moment, when she remembers to. Our fights consist of me calling her Kate and smoking and her leaving rooms when I enter. Passive agression is inherited.

Because we were fighting on Saturday evening I went into the chemist and asked for the largest set of anti-wrinkle creams they had. Then I gave it to her for Mother's Day. Just to teach her a lesson. REARING YOUR CHILDREN HAS STOLEN YOUR YOUTH, OLD WOMAN. Oh, it sounds evil now but at the time it was merely a bit snide. My sister ran into a supermarket on her way home and bought instant coffee and marmalade. 'It is posh marmalade and posh coffee,' Sally insisted.
'I love it!' my mother said, 'it shows so much thought and everything.'

'Yes, Kate' I said. She left the room. What she doesn’t know is that I bought myself the We are Scientists album with her itunes account. Har-de-har-har, Kate. Until her Visa bill comes in at least.

Tis a pity she's a...bitch

Mairead's dog Lily gave birth to puppies this evening. For weeks they thought she had a tumour but as it turned out she was knocked up. She is keeping quiet on who the father is. As they were born on my birthday the puppies will be called Lucy, Lucy, Lucy and Lucy. So my name can live on.

UPDATE: Puppies all male. So what? The names stay.

Swag

I don't know about you, but if you are a normal, slightly self-interested person you will enjoy the recieving of gifts at your birthday. If you are like me however you will give whole and unflinching reverence to the fact that on your birthday you get stuff. I can't help noticing that I haven't recieved much from my internet fans. Postal delay perhaps? Anyway, in case you by some bizarre cirumstance have not yet purchased my birthday present (you are dead to me), I give you, to avoid embarrassing double giftings, a list of my birthday earnings:

1. Driving lessons. Yipp-fuckin-ee. So I can learn to drive faster and be able to pick up my mother from pubs.
2. A haircut. Because I love them so much.
3. A pre-scratched scratch card, from my beloved sister. She scratched it for me to save my arthritic fingers. Thanks Sal!
4. A free pack of crisps, from my father. From the shop he works in. And the promise of a free dinner. Score.
5. A card with a picture of a girl reading a book on from my aunt Mercy. 'I'll settle up with you later.' Cue Mercy avoiding me for the next twelve months.

That is IT. Oh yes, I have the promise of a few free vodkas on the weekend but does it suffice? A few BOTTLES of vodkas wouldn't do me, let me tell you. Look at all I have done for the internet community! For the world! I got Kara and Ken together, I'll have you know. I still haven't recieved delivery of any crates of booze for that little favour.

Piss to that. There's a bottle of sparkling wine with my name on in the fridge.

23 years a-dying

I don't know if you know this but Tramore is very like Rome. It is built mainly on hills. In other ways: not so much. After pleading desperately my case for getting off work on Friday to jaunt off up the country (not a chance, said my esteemed employer), I jogged the quarter mile of sheer, godawful hill from the prom up to the bank at the top of the town and nearly fucking died. Fuck. There should be benches for us old people.

If you aren't reading this we may all be dead

But if you are we're not! Something's afoot. I can't do anything to my blog anymore. I poke it but it just belches at me. I wring my hands and it smirks. Aaaagh! All I get is this:

450 Write error: No space left on deviceblog/18/61/12/feigninginterest/archives/2005_01_01_feigninginterest_archive.html

I think, I think Blogger is calling me fat.

I know that she knows that I'm not fond of asking

Last night I was phoned with an IT query. Lucy Aughney, IT dept! Sally's computer in college had frozen as she was turning it off and she was having a panic attack as she had not yet started a 2,000 word essay due the next day. As you can see, she is proudly upholding family tradition by not doing anything unless she absolutely has to. Because I am a renouned technological genuis I wisely told her to turn it off again.

'Omigod, it worked! You're a genuis!'

Then I told her not to turn it on for about ten minutes to allow the computer time to 'reboot', that it might have a 'memory' issue or there might be a problem with the 'mainframe'. That's right, I have no idea what I'm talking about. Luckily she doesn't either so I was really just saying random words at this point.

I also told her that her computer freezing might have something to do with overuse of bebo. Evil.

The mirror crack'd from side to side

My watch has stopped, at 9.11 on March the 11th. Can we read anything into this? Besides the fact that my killer was a man with a limp who smoked untipped french cigarettes? 9-11. Can it be that my watch is trying to tell me something?








Bit late fucker, says I.

I hate Elizabeth

That whore. She's only gone and announced she's having a birthday party next week. A birthday party for herself, the selfish cow, even though it's my birthday in nine days. And guess when her birthday party is? FRIDAY. St-effing-Patricks Day. I had big plans for St Patricks day. I was going to go to the parade with the dog and make him walk in it with a tricolour tied to his back. Then I was going to come home and make the traditional Aughney family Paddy's day dish: lime jelly, vanilla ice cream and tinned mandrin. Then I would put on my Seven Ages dvd and drink some tins of Guinness. Maybe I would persuade everyone to sing The Fields of Athenry or something; plans weren't exactly locked down.

Now I have to work till five o'clock and go out with her. Having to work can't be traced precisely to Elizabeth but I bet she'll laugh when she hears that. Cow. And then it'll be my birthday and I'll be all: 'hey are you coming to my party?' and everyone will be going, 'uh, nah Lucy, wrecked after Elizabeth's. And broke from buying her big, massive, gold-plated present so can't get you anything.'

Bitchbitchbitchbitchbitch

Where's Joey?

"We're in Rotarua now (look it up, nerd) and I just did Zorbing and a 140ft swoop. I then had to change under garments. Zorbingis where they throw you into a big ball, fuck you in a load of water and push you off a hill. And before you ask, yes I did pay for this. The swoop kindof speaks for itself. Extremely scary as once your up there you have to pullthe release chord yourself. Then you swing at about 150 km, then you shit your pants."

Correspondence recieved via email,

Mar 8 2006 from Ms Mitten, on location in Rotarua NZ

Good to know, Joey. Good to know.

Sally gets new hair

Or new haircut. Maybe.

This internet thing may get me evicted

I am now online! In my house! It is thrilling. But less than perfect. The wires are too short to stretch upstairs so I am installed at the kitchen table. The dog keeps wandering in and out, getting tangled up with all the cables and staring at them. What is this small black box, he thinks. Can I piss up against it? I've locked the fucker outside. No one gets in the way of my internet. Mary told mum that we should drill a hole in the floor to put the wires upstairs. My mother just looked at me: this child of mine is so not worth drilling holes in my house.

My internet came in the post last Thursday in a big white box. I took it all out, stared at it and plugged it in to bits of my laptop. Nothing happened. I rang the eircom helpline and cried down the line for an hour. Then I forgot about it till just now. And it works! I am a telecommunications wizard. Send me all your technology problems and I'll ignore them for all the best part of a week.

Best Supporting Dreamboat

I done stole it from the fug girls. With whom I concur on all points.

Gay Cowboy Mountain. See what I did there?

What is with Bebo? I don't get it. What are you supposed to do with it? I am sufficently satisfied with the level of annoying people in my life, thank you very much, I have no need for any more. Marie told me that most of the PCs at UCD library are filled with idiots using Bebo. There are calls for it to be banned! What are they using it for? What does it do? I am stumped. All the same, I have a bebo homepage. Not that I know what to put on it, mind.