What do you call an obese model? Unemployed!

Well bejesus begorrah, it seems the IRA have decided to get rid of ye olde weapons ehh. Well i will believe that when i see it. Still they must have known that their time is coming to an end. Since Sept 11 there has been no more rosy nostalgic support from America and terrorism is not very popular anymore, not even against the British. Plus i think those McCarthy sisters had a huge influence, i cant remember the last time that the IRA got such total condemnation from all sides over such an extended period of time. Now if only the prods would leave.

I have not really blogged for a while as little of interest has happened. I rang home today and spoke to my mother who is just back from Belarus, she enjoyed it as much as one can enjoy visiting orphanages for mentally disabled babies and half-way houses for destitute kids of out of control alcoholic parents......and that is not a metaphor. My visitors are arriving in America tomorrow and coming up to me on Monday. I am looking forward to it. I shall have to have stern words with them however, appearantly my garden that i have been working on since February is going downhill and a few of my creations have died. I am getting them to bring over pictures.

On the work front everything is going grand, even though it has been incredibly humid over here and it has been difficult to get through a full day. I was telling steve this story today. There is this girl called Rhiannon who i work with on the coffee counter and to be honest she has always seemed a bit prickly and extremely sarcastic. The other day i asked her what was up with the 'tude and she said she was just tired, she got to sleep at three and had to be in work at 5:30. It turns out she has not been getting a lot of sleep lately as she has either been re-reading the Harry Potter series and Terry Pratchett and that she has become addicted to playing World of Warcraft! Needless to say we get along grand now and have many nerdish conversations.

as the rabbit says, 'thats all folks'

Ar n-Athair ata ar neamh

How do, all my crew? You will all be glad to hear that most of my afflictions have gone down. Thanks to copious amounts of sleep and self-medicating the mosquito bites have faded and i have avoided getting any more. The reason my sunburn was so bad was that the skin was too cracked to put Aloe on it so i just left it and that made it worse but now that i am putting on Savlon cream and some herbal stuff it is healing very nicely and no longer stops me sleeping. Plus my sunburn as a whole has died down and i am now peeling, which means i have loads of skin to eat, Hurrah

I went to go see Fantastic Four yesterday as it was my day off. Noone else was around so i ended up cycling up on my own. I was pretty disappointed in it to tell the truth. Absolutely full of product placement, cheesy acting and it committed the biggest comic-book adaptation mistake of not remaining true to the comics. On the other hand i did see some good trailers before hand, Tim Burton's 'The Corpse Bride' looks promising and does 'The Island'. Another chop-socky action one that seems like it may entertain Steve is 'Transporter2', now admittedly the original Transporter was just a mediocore homo-erotic excuse for Jason Statham to take off his top as much as possible and writhe around in oil but this one seems pretty class. He fights a bit like Jackie Chan with lots of props and it seems pretty real, no invible ropes. I shall check in out come September.

I also went to a poetry reading down in the cafe (or The Read as we call it) last night. It was class. It was a Beat Night and everyone had to dress up in black and there were candy cigerettes passed around, people wore berets and when ever someone read you would click your fingers and go 'yaaahh'. It was a complete piss-take but it was pretty funny. We also had a trumpet player and a double bassist who were doing improv behind us. I went up and did one called 'Our Father' which was actually just the Our Father in Irish, i told them however that it was a olde heartwrenching poem about a mans connection to the land lost to the British and a family lost to the famine. Stupid americans. I only found out afterwards that it was being broadcast and was also streaming on the net so ye could have listened in. Ye may get a chance again in the future as one of my managers does a radio show every Monday and she said she may let me have her slot one week if i wanted. I am thinking of doing 2 hours of Irish music, ie Frames, Mundy Juliet Turner, Aslan, Damien Rice, Snow Patrol (they are irish yes?) Keane (again i am presuming they are irish), some Even Better than the Reel Thing, BellX1, The Thrills and maybe, maybe some U2. I am limited to what i have on my laptop you see, i dont actually have any Cranberries which is a pity. Closer to the date i will give ye the address and my probable playlist so ye can make suggestions, [that does not include steve as he is a musical cretin]

Okay so after the beat night myself and Suzanne went to the bar were we had a little talk. You see my 'work-related dilemma' was that for the last month i have been 'seeing' my manager in work, who for now one will be called The Madam. Now we have been keeping it on the sly as we were not sure how Suzanne and our other supervisors would react. The chain of command is me, the The Madam in charge of the books, the Yvonne the manager of the cafe as a whole then Suzanne who owned the Cafe and the bookshop and the coffee roasters. I did not like lying to Suzanne however and since she is an intelligent woman i think she was getting suspicious about the amount of time i spent 'watching videos' over in The Madams so i brought her to the pub, got her a few whiskys and then told her. She was thankfully alright with it which is a great relief, The Madam had told me that they usually make a point of not hiring people going out as it complicates things but i think we have been very well behaved in work and noone knows bar one girl who saw a mark on my neck and has been giving me slack about it since. I killed her last week.

Oh and one more thing, i was walking down town the other day and in many shop windows there are these professional pictures of individual kids with a sign saying 'Rick, a celebration of adoption'. Now i thought, "how nice, this must be kids who have just got homes". How wrong i was, it turns out that these kids are looking for homes! Yes its kind of like Have a look at these orphens and if you see a cute one you can bring it home. Yes buying children is still alive and well in the States.

amen

edit: i just finished the entire 1st season of Arrested Development, it was fucking class. Cant wait for Season 2

Must....keep....control......

GOOD GOD DO I HATE MOSQUITO’S!!!!. Three of my fingers were bitten and now they are swollen up like balloons and I have also been bitten on my wrists and ankles. The fuckers even bite through denim and got my fricking legs. My fingers are even bigger than Liam’s finger when he broke it, plus the itching is driving me fucking crazy, I cant get to sleep and then it wakes me up in the morning. I had stopped using the industrial repellent cuz it stank, was sticky and tasted horrible but fuck everyone else I am wearing it 24/7 from now on. Plus my sunburn has developed into something not nice and the skin is all cracked and incredibly painful. Needless to say I have not been sleeping well lately even though I have been taking anti-histamine tablets, covering it in steroid anti-allergy cream and also anti-histamine cream. I look like an epileptic panda.

In between grimacing in pain when my move my arms, rolling my eyes when my bulbous fingers touch anything, and spasming moronically as I fight the urge to itch manically I have been in contact with home. My family is arriving on the Friday and driving straight up here. They are staying for one night then heading off for the weekend. I finish work early on Monday and then have Tuesday and Wednesday off so they are coming back then and we will be off for two or three days to do shit. Plus it is my birthday on the Wednesday so it will be cool to have them around for that. Oh and Laina I did not have to take any additional days off, I just moved my weekend days so I am still very much up for Boston.

Bar this I have very little to report. I have only spent around 400-500 dollars since I arrived here more than a month ago and $100 of what was on an MP3 player alone. I will wait for the family to arrive as I am hoping to go to Portland when they are here so I shall get some clothes or shit here. It may even be that i will go home with more money that i arrived here with, which will be nice.

I am going to see Charlie & the Chocolate factory agin tonight, this time with Suzanne. Hopefully this will butter her up a bit as we need to have a serious talk about a ‘work related dilemma’. I will keep you posted about it in the near future.

Home Comforts?

Hmmmmm, I am just finished the new Harry Potter book. I don’t know what to make of it. It must be good as I really want the next one and feel shocked after reading it. The books are getting more and more adult and I do not know how they will make this one into a kids film. There is a girl in work who I know has read it so I will talk to her about it tomorrow.

Oh and today was not a good day in work. Although the day itself started out well enough. I’ll start from the beginning. I got up at half nine and after breakfast and was then picked up and went for a swim in the quarry. This time we were completely alone and it was amazing, in the middle of a forest and it was really misty, highly enjoyable. I then came back home at around half twelve and thinking that I did not have work til half one I decided to watch an episode of Arrested Development. At around 10 past one the phone started ringing and I was suddenly filled with dread, I raced upstairs to check my timetable and to my horror I saw that I was supposed to be in work at half 12! I fucking sprinted down and just got in as my supervisor was ringing my boss at home to see did she know where I was. She was not at all pleased. I was pissed as well cuz it was my fault and I felt bad.

The problem with my supervisor on the coffee counter is this. She is completely bi-polar. She used to be a cocaine addict but kicked the habit a few years ago but now is completely unpredictable. Liam and Amanda may remember the barmaid in P&G’s. Now Kiai is completely like that but thankfully she is nice the majority of the time. I have gone to a few barbeques with her and myself and her have gone to the cinema a few times. Plus she offered to bring me to Portland on my days off. The problem is in work when I cannot begin to fathom which way the capricious winds of her humour will blow. She will either be completely sarcastic, condescending or plain ignorant. ON the other hand she could be charming, genuinely interested in what I am saying or really funny. These moods can switch in a heartbeat and it is beginning to put a downer when I am working the coffee counter. I end up just being very polite and neutral with her which I don’t enjoy. Perhaps the problem is that we are friends outside work and she does not know how to handle it. From my point of view I am not intimidated or threatened by her at all and perhaps a bit disrespectful, if she slags me I return the favour so maybe she is trying to be a real boss in work to compensate. Who can know the mind of a woman.

In other news I got a call from my mother last night. It turns out that next Friday my father, brother and uncle are flying into Boston and coming up to visit. Truth be told, and keep them hush, I am not too sure how I feel about this. I mean it will be great to see them and chances are they will be here for my birthday but they are putting me in an awkward position. I am not, and no offence to anyone, in the slightest bit home-sick here. I am enjoying myself immensely and rarely feel a longing for stuff like I did in New Paltz. I am really looking forward to going home in October but at the same time I am really looking forward to the next 10 weeks here. I am not crying out to see familiar faces is what I am trying to say. Plus I do not know what to do with them. My uncle is ill and in a wheel-chair and my brother is only 12 so entertainment is limited there. Getting time off work is also going to be very difficult, it will involve going to the afore-mentioned boss and asking a favour. Plus they are coming on a Friday and on the following Wednesday a Lobster Festival starts here and it is the busiest time of the entire year, eclipsing the Blues Festival exponentially. It will be good to see them but I forsee problems.

I-mothafucking-Dyllic

Ya so after suffering in work today with my burnt neck and armpits and teh torture of looking at the Harry Potter books but not reading them i needed a pick-me-up for the evening. My boss suggested going for a swim in a nearby abandoned quarry. As i was so hot and icky that sounded sweet. The place was completely amazing and this picture does not do it justice, we actaully went in one of the bigger pools around 100 metres in diameter and with hugh cliffs all round. It has been abandoned for more than 50 years so there are trees growing everywhere. I was just floating in the middle of it chillaxing and it was a moment that i will really savour from this summer.

Afterwards we went for a bite to eat and then went to Charlie and the Chocolate factory. I dont know if ye plebs have it over there yet but twas quite good, Johnny Depp is brilliant and the Oompa Loompa songs are class, i want the sound-track. It kindof went a bit downhill at the end i thought but i will still be going to see it again later in the week with Suzanne. Bar that i do not have much other news bar the fact that i have biro written all over my leg but cant remember how it got there, hmmmm.

PS: steve i sent you an email, thats the fourth one at this stage,
PPS: i have changed my clock to US time as to avoid confusion as to when i posted, FYI

Hmm, the Winds are changing

Aye yi yi folks, looks like it is going to be another three hour sllep night. Just in now and am due to get up again at six, although i suppose that is around 4 hours so thats okay. You will never guess what is sitting here in my room at this very minute, thats right the 6th Harry Potter book, known as HPATHBP from now on. Yes one of the joys of working in a bookshop is that we get things before they go on sale so very illegally Suzanne brought one home for me a day before ye plebs got it. Hurrah, now when the last one came out oh so long ago i started it at eleven at night and had it finished by five the next moring. This one is a similar length and i had intended starting it when unfortunatley i had to go watch videos, damn rodents!

Today was one of the laziest days i have had, the sun was absolutely splitting the rocks so after the gym i went out on the Hammock with my book War in a Time of peace (a detailed look at the Administrations of the Bush, CLinton and Bush Jnr Presidencies) and did some study. Being now completely paranoifd about mosquitoes the same way cattle is around electric fences i slathered myself in sun cream and added liberal amounts of Deet, which is an industiral insect repellent that also keeps away 90% of other living organisms. After a while i was getting hot so i decided the best way to get a tan is not lying on your back in a wife-beater so i took that off and did some gardening to get an overall colour. NOw after a while i decided to go back in and discovered too things, one very good and the other very bad. Good news first, i had only gotten bitten once in the entire time and instead of swelling up and ballooning to obscene portions it was already fading, my body was finally not going into anahepeltic shock every time i was bitten by a measly bug. ON the other hand i saw that i had unfortunately got burnt....on the fromt.....while i was wearing the vest. I now have strap marks and it looks like i got burnt while wearing a bra which people seem to find very funny. but not me, i also got burnt on the insode of my knees and on my ankles, talk about random.

Anyway i am off ot bed to try and procure some of Morpheous sweet Lethe-derived draft, i dont even know why i wasted time writting this, tis ful of mistakes, as Treebeard would say, HARRUMPH!!

What does a baby in a microwave sound like?? I dont know, i was too busy masturbating

Well all, how goes it in the lands of Not-Here? I am chillaxin after a very tough and eventful week. Had my first well earned lie-in this morning and have since cut ye olde lawn, gone to the gym, set up a bank acount, have a triple chocolate cookie and checked out the latest White Dwarf. All in all a very productive day considering it is only half four. I have also rented out the entire 1st season of Arrested Development which i am in the process of watching, its fucking class, and it only cost me 7 dollars, hurrah for cheap Chinese labour.

I was supposed to go to Portland today but my ride fell though so i am just hanging around here for the rest of the week. Between the tax-back from home and my first 3 weeks paycheck (700 dollars mothafuckers with another 100 going to the tax man that i will get back next year) i am rolling in the old spondulla-monuxla. If only i had something to buy with it. I could even get something expensive on the internet with it and get it shipped to me, HINT HINT LIAM!!!. On the plus side the literature event of the year is happening this weekend, thats right on Saturday the 16th the guarenteed bestselling classic that is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is being released. We are having a little thing in the store where kids had to write a 500 word max story with the Harry Potter characters and the winners will get to read it out loud and get a prize, hopefully my pseudonom Pól McÓg Shee Han will not be too obvious.

Not much else to report, i got bored the night of the blues festival so before i headed out i bleached my hair, tis not as white as i would have liked because of a solution amalgamation malfuntion but i shall do it again in a week or two and it shall then either be sparkling white or curling smoking on the floor. Here is a picture of me waving at you, the reader. Hello.

The Chicken and the Egg were lying in bed. The Egg was smoking a cigerette. "Well" it said, "I guess that answers that question..."

OH Lordy the insomnia is back. Yes I know this entry may not make much sense when you read what I wrote yesterday but it is nearly 2 in the morning and I cannot sleep. I worked 7 til 3 today and it was not actually that bad. I was on the counter but it was very quite and I spent the last two hours helping in books and listening to my music. I came home then planning on having a nap and then cutting the grass as the weather was gorgeous but when I woke up two hours later there was torrential rain out. Tis hurricane season down south and we are getting these unexpected squalls in the midst of scorching hot sun.

Anyway I rented Intermission out tonight as I thought Suzanne would like it and she thought it was hilarious, she has been in Ireland several times and is enough of an anti-fan of “Celtic Mysticism” to get most of the in-jokes so she says that she may even buy it, which is nice.

Anywho I decided to go to bed early as I am still shattered and my nap was shit but of course the best laid plans never work out and here I am, burning time by writing this. One benefit is that I do not have to start work tomorrow til 11 thanks to my doing extra hours on Saturday so if I manage to fall asleep now I will still get 8 hours sleep. I don’t understand why this happens, I am dead tired but my mind is not. I have been taking my protein shakes but I make a point of never having them after 7 and til now they have never affected me. Perhaps it is because I took some of those anti-histamine tablets that cause drowsyness but I stopped taking them a few days ago, I am not sure of the day as the last few have melded into a blur. Still I have tomorrow and Wednesday to work in books and then I am off for two days.

I am hoping to go to see Fantastic Four on Friday, one of my managers fancies the guy playing the Human Torch so I have been feeding her rumours about nude scenes in order to get her to drive me out. Damn Americans and their Automobile culture, there is no way to walk to the cinema and I don’t want to be asking Suzanne for a lift. It the equivalent of moving the Omniplex out the ennis road dual carriage-way. Speaking of that, I was on the till today and I was serving this one customer who asks me “are you from Ennis?”. I just kind of stared at her for a minute thinking that she must be incredibly good at accents to narrow it down that far but it turns out she was in Ennis one time and it was the only space she knew. Freeaky I tell you.

Well hopefully this incredibly interesting update will be enough to send even me to sleep. Good Night World!! Of course it is half seven back in Ireland at this stage but lets forget the complicated bits.

Chronic Exaustion-R-Us

Oh Lordy I am shattered. In the last 35 hours I have worked 17 hours and slept three. I am still confused as to what day it is. It all started Saturday when I had to go in to work early to cover the book section while the managers went to a book sale so that was from 8 until eleven. I was not timetabled for this though so I had to come back at half one in order to work my seven hour shift on the coffee counter. Now this weekend is the North Atlantic Blues Festival up here and that means that there are live blues bands playing on the streets and in the bars all day long. The music is actually quite class but unfortunately yesterday afternoon was rainy so that drove everybody inside and we had one of the busiest days of the year. It was just crazy and I did not get home til 8.

“Poor Paul”, you are probably thinking “Knowing him he went to sleep for the night though”. Hah how wrong you were!! I went down town with Susanne and her friend to have a look at all the different bands in the bars and at around half ten I met up with a few people from work. Being mature sophisticates we went to the Wine-bar and scoffed at the young drunkards on the street. Unfortunately then it gets a bit hazy……

I know we left that place at half twelve and the bands were still playing on the streets as it had cleared up to be a gorgeous night. So there was much dancing with complete randomers on the street with crazy blues dance, then we went down to the marina and tried skimming stones and other stuff must have happened too. Long story short, I got home at 4 in the morning but had to set my alarm for 7:30 as I had work at eight and while I was completely in charge of books I was also needed at the counter. Today was quite possibly the longest day ever. Of the people who were out the night before I was the only one who had work and I was like a zombie. I even had a my first coffee, a straight espresso which is kind-of going in the deep end. Between that and the live Jazz-Jam going on in the café I barely managed to stay awake. It is now twelve o clock and I am on again at 7 tomorrow. Oh the life of a sailor.

With blade and breath they seek my doom

With one hand they offer counsel but with the other they seek to upsurp me!!! God, Lord of the rings is a class film. I’m just after watching the 1st Cd of the extended version of Return of the King and it was as good as ever. I was just saying that Peter Jackson is such a good director that he is able to leave entire battles out of shot, such as the failed retaliation against the orcs in Osgiliath and still keep you hooked, you could say ‘He picks his battles’!!!!! HAHAHA actually I did say that, susan thought it was funny too, well she chortled a bit…I think.

Anyway I digress. The poetic title is not just the influence of Tolkien speech but also what I thought when I discovered a nefarious plot being planned by the very people I thought I could trust. It’s a long story but stick with me; a few days ago when it was really hot Susan said she could bring me down to the beach for a swim or to the lake. I decided on the lake cuz it looked prettier and would probably be cleaner. The next day I was talking to the girls in work and they said I should have gone to the beach as it is really nice as well. It is pretty calm as it is in a big bay called Penobscot Bay which is slightly smaller than Galway Bay. They even said that we would all go next week perhaps.

So I’m thinking the same as you probably are, “What nice people, how lucky am I!”. SO today I was reading this book about a local seal called Andre. It turns out Andre is a bit of a celebrity like Fungie the dolphin back home. As I read on however I was filled with bone-numbing dread. You see Andre had a brother called Biscuit or something and he would also swim around the boats in the bay. But one day while he was following a boat he disappeared, and when the fisherman went to investigate he found Biscuit……….AND A GREAT FUCKING WHITE SHARK!!!!!! After a bit of research I found out that Penobscot Bay is a ‘casual feeding area’ for Great Whites and there is even an Island called White Shark Island in the bay. Now those of ye who know me know that I have a completely irrational fear of sharks and even feel very nervous, nay scared shitless swimming in a fresh-water man-made canal 60 miles from the coast or even sometimes in swimming pools so ye can imagine how I feel about going swimming in the ocean where there are Great White carnivorous ruthless freakishly fucking scary sharks within 15 miles!! It aint going to happen people. Of course no-one has ever been attacked by one but I would not want to be the first. I had foolishly told the wankers in work about my shark thing a while back and they thought it funny not to tell me cuz, rest assured, it was one of the first things I asked when I got here “Do you have man-eating sharks?”. Next thing they will tell me that they have Sasquach’s………On a completely different topic, me and Susan are going camping next week.

Hurrah, 4th July

Hurrah, hurrah it's the day after Independance day. Twas enjoyable enough fun. We had a barbeque next door and everyone from work came over. That finished up early enough and a few of us went back to a house and just drank and watched a movie (Long Hot Wet American Summer, not as porny as it sounds but very weird and pretty funny). We then went and looked at the fireworks which were okay but we were so far away that it took ten seconds for the bang to reach us, someone even asked me "Do you have fire-works in Ireland?" Anyhow that was grand fun.

Anyhow i also went and used my credit card for the first time and made several purchases. I got me some new threads, a new memory stick to replace Joans shitty one and a spanking 1Gb MP3 player. Now i just have to figure out how to repay it from over here, do i have 30 days from 1st purchase or is it the end of every month it has to be cleared, I think i will just lodge my 673 euros into the credit account and let that be it.

I was reading Liam's blog and he was just on about how Blog's seem to be inherently self-absorbed, well that aint alway a bad thing. I am over here and while i am interested in Joan's opinion on the Burma situation and Liam's opinion on the Garda Bill i am far far more interested in little things like what ye did today and who ye did them with. I can hear people spout about politcs anywhere but hearing Clonlara stories is a little harder to do.

So continuing my steam of inanities i am just back from War of the Worlds, i dont know if ye peasants have it over there yet but it was okay. It was different from most movies in its kind in that Tom Cruise was not the hero that tries saves the world and gets the fair maiden but instead is just one of the dirty refugees that you see running screaming for their lives. Plus he is small, yes for once true-to-life nearly every male and several females stand taller than the diminuative fella. I dont like him.

I may have mentioned before that i am suffering a bit from mosquitoes. That has not changed and seems to have gotten worse. While i do not get bitten as mush as other people, when i do my body way over reacts. All these Mainers have grown up getten bitten my mosquitoes so they just ignore them now but i get huge swollen red bubonics where i get bitten. I am constantly itching like crazy and i was up til 2 last night slowly going mad. I am slathering creams left right and centre and i took a few ttablets tonight that not only are supposed to stop the itch but make you sleep so you dont make it worse, that is going to be my excuse for any spelling mistakes in this one. Worst thing is that there is nothing i can do until my body stops reactin so bad, its impossible to avoid being bitten over here.

On that note i will sign off, i can feel the narcotics already, luckily tomorrow is my Friday as i have the next two days off. Happiness is.

MWAHHHH HAAAA HAAAA HAAA

Just got an e-mail from my mommy there. There was a bit of scandel yesterday when she tried to ring the house over here. I was out at the gym so Patrick, Suzannes husband answered the phone. Phyllis (my mam) asked to speak to me but he did not understand her and thinking she was a telemarketer he hung up on her, she tried again and he did the same thing, she kept trying and he kept hanging up, my poor mother was getting kind of worried to she kept ringing, eventually he got so furious at this "Telemarketer" kept ringing him during dinner that he appearantly started yelling at her and told her never to ring again. Poor phyllis did not know what to do so she got my father to ring and this time Suzanne answered and not knowing what had gone before she just said in her happy voice "Oh he's not here at the minute, i'll get him to ring you back when he comes". My parents must have thought i was being held hostage by loons. I came home then and they both told me their stories and only then realised what must have happened, by golly were they mortified.

And in other news, mommy needed my P60 (a tax form) for something at home so since i did not get one she was on to the Revenue Commissioners, I never got one after the Department of Foreign Affairs and she wanted them to post one out. Anyway they said that i would not get one because of some silly tax thing but while they were looking at my file they noticed something. Appearantly the tax-man owes me a bit of money..........SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE EUROS OF MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Fucking sweet is all i have to say.