THE FLOG CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

(Last year's Christmas story was a confusing and wholey un-christmassy tale about the origins of Santa Claus, where St. Nicholas was actually kidnapped by eleves on behalf of consortium of global pagan creatures, and exiled to the north pole, all in an attempt to dechristianise Christmas. Yes. That was it.

This years tale comes courtesy of Crapman, who either wrote this tale or found it circulating on the net somewhere. Crapman, being an even bigger geek than yours truly, has access to the darkest sweatiest crevices of the world wide web, and has the knack of pounding out the most useless crap from the internet's layered fibres like an aul wan pounding her old hallway rug to expunge some of the generation-spanning dust particles. What I'm trying to say that Crapman could spam you more times than the word is written in the script of that Monty Python sketch. And this is just one example.
Enjoy, and Merry Christmas to all my readers, I hope you both will be very happy.)

The Story of the Knack-tivity

Dere's dis boord called Mary, yeah? She's a virgin (wha' de fook is
dah?) She's not married or nuttin', but she's got dis felleh, Joe,
righ'? He does joinery an' all dah. Mary lives with him in a flah
dowwen in Nazareh. One day Mary meets dis yungfelleh Gabriel. She's
like `Wha are yeh bleedin'lookin' ah?" Gabriel just goes "You're
fookin' pregnant so yeh are". Mary's scarleh. She gives him a fookin'
earful: "Are you bleedin' startin'? I'm no fookin' sluh. I never bin
wih no one!"

So Mary goes and sees her cousin Liz, who's six months gone herself.
Liz is on a mad buzz, bud. She's filled with spirits, Barcardi
Breezers an' all dah. She sez te Mary " Ah howeyeh, Mary, I can feel
me chiseller in me stummick and I reckon I'm well blessed. Think of
all deh money we'll be getting from deh social." Mary goes "Yeah,
s'pose you're righ'" Mary an' Joe haven't goh a fookin' bean so they
have to po nse a donkey, an'go dowwen the Behlehem on dah. Dey get to
dis boozer an' Mary wants to stop, yeah? To have her yungfelleh an'
all dah. But there's no fookin' no roohem at the inn, righ'? So Mary
an' Joe break an' into this garridge, only it's filled wih animals.
Cowis an' sheep an'all dah.

Then these three lads tourn up, lookin bleedin' rapih, wih crowens on
der heads an' all dah'. They're like "Ah Jaysis, howeyeh!" an' say
dey're deh tree wise men from de East Wall. Joe goes: 'If you're so
bleedin wiyis, wha de fook are yizzer doin' wih dis Frankenstein an'
myrrh? Why didn't yeh just bring gold, 20 Blue and Boorberry?' It's
all about to kick off when Gabriel turns up again an' sez he's got
anudder message from dis Lord hardchaw.
He's like 'Deh coppers is comin an' they're killin all de chisslers.
You better fook off to Egypt.' Joe goes 'You must be fookin' off yer
bleedin'rocker if yeh tink I'm goin' te fookin' Egypt on a fookin'
donkey' Gabriel sez 'Suit yerself, bud. But it's your look out if yeh
stay.' So they go dowwen teh Egypt till they've stopped killin deh
foorst-born an' all an' annyways it's safe an' dah.

Then Joe and Mary and Jesus go back to Nazareh, an' Jesus turns water
into Dutch Gold.

HEADWRECKED

[warning: this review contains spoilers and nut traces]

In my recent bout of celeb-spotting, my flatmate Kieran went one up on me. Walking down Bridge Street, Cork, he saw Ed Harris. Unable to resist he went up and tapped him on the shoulder.
"You're Ed Harris." He said.
"Yeah I know." He replied.


There's nothing sexy about smoking, Ed. Haven't you seen that Nico guy?

Ed (I think first-name terms are appropriate here, having met someone who once met him and therefore a special unshakeable bond is thereby forged) was in town for the world premiere (no less) of Neil La Bute's play Wrecks, a one-man play in the form of a monologue dramatising Eddie's (I think I can call him Eddie, considering our newly-formed friendship by association) inner thoughts during his wife's removal.
As Eddie-baby (I think I can call him Eddie-baby, considering how close we've become) sparked up a herbal cigarette whilst reminiscing about his wife, some stupid person behind us - some auld biddy philistine - turns to her auld biddy philistine friend and says in a squeaky Cork pitch: "What about the smoking ban?"
Thankfully she didn't pipe up again, apart from some HRT-induced sighs at Eddie-woo-woo's (I think, after all we've been through I can call him that) most charmingly witty utterances.
But wait - what was that? An elephant had somehow acquired a hoover and was cleaning in the room behind the auditorium, clumsily banging the back-room skirting boards with about as much care and soft-touchedness as Mike Tyson playing tiddly-winks. Well, that's my theory anyway. While the audience ignored the incessant humming and thudding from somewhere outside the theatre, trying not to get some disturbing natural mental picture of whatever they associate with humming and thudding together, like Daniel O' Donnell having it off with a fridge or something, Eddie woo-woo-peach-pie-snuckims (that's my special love-name for him) broke his monologue to address the audience:
"Does anyone else hear that noise?"
Thankfully the elephant finally hoovered up all his empty peanut shells - or broke through the back wall, you know, whatever happened first, and the play could continue. There were no further interruptions, apart from one ambulance sirens a-wailing flying past our theatre, an airplane apparently flying out of control above our heads and a fart flying out from some fellas arse.
Oh yes, the fart I'd almost forgotten about that. Now, I loathe to demean the performance with this incident as one of my biggest memories of the night, but it was bloody hilarious. It was a comedy fart, you see: it manifested itself as a high-pitched squeak that sustained itself for just the right amount of time that you can't pretend it didn't happen and it actually becomes part of the show. Still, it least it'd be better than an SBD. Mind you, the perpretrator could at least blame that on the elephant next door.
The play's oedipal twist has received some mixed reviews. An Article in the Observer said that the revelation is "wholly unconvincing and cheapens" the play, when in actuality the sense of naturalism about the incest makes us question the relationship between morality, the ideal of love and the pursuit of happiness; although the only review that I could think of as I left the theatre was: "So... Ed Harris is a motherf*cker..."
I think I'm entitled to call him that. Us being such great buddies now and all.

AROUND THE WORLD IN RACY WAYS

Reading through The Travels of Sir John Mandeville at the mo. It's a gas little book written in 1356 which also happens to be the most famous travel narrative of the Middle Ages, kicking the medieval arse of Marco Polo. I especially love some of the 14th century woodcuts included with the edition I'm reading. Here are some of them... Michael Palin's nothing on this fella I'm telling ya.

SCARY MARY FROM TIPPERARY

Scary Mary from Tipperary, a fellow refugee from the former anonymous multinational that we worked for a few months ago, has just announced she is moving back to Cork. I should have known when Duncan's horses did turn and eat each other and other portents of a grisly doom. She told me she was coming back when I bumped into her in that must-go venue the Brog - Cork's number one dive, endowed with a special blend of wee-wee and waiting-on-that-grant-to-through unwashed academic. Immediately after she told me she was to return, she thought for a moment and with due delight said: "I'll be on your website again, yay!" So, I can't disappoint the fans eh? Although fan is a bit too strong a word maybe. If she's a fan it'd be one of those pissy ones you get in a pound shop that offer no relief from the heat and break after two days anyway.
Since I started working in the airport, Mary has taken great interest in the celebs I've been spotting there. With that in mind, on my birthday she gave me a 'Fame & Fortune' card with an inscribed card: "Here's a chance to meet your hero Marty Whelan." With excited anxiety I scratched away that grey filmy shite they put over those cards, wondering: would I match any amount and thus gain that fame and/or fortune they so brazenly promise? Or would I get the three stars I needed to get on the telly? I'm telling ya, the millions of grannies countrywide scrubbing away that heavy lead membrane every day, it becoming dust and evaporating up into the atmosphere, is probably the single biggest cause of greenhouse gases - why won't people realise?!
But, as I scratched, the environment took a secondary concern over the glitz and glamour of RTE studios, as the third star slowly revealed itself (all in an above-board kind of way) and the thought filled me: Telly here I come! I was sure Marty would pull mine from the pot, I was sure of it...

When I say that Mary was interested in the celebs I saw, I say "celebs" very tentatively because most of them wouldn't be quite on the A-list, lets just say. In fact most of them would be another 26 imaginary letters behind Z, about two letters up from yer ma and her friends. Nevertheless, here's a little list: Mary Elizabeth Mostrantonio (yer one Maid Marian from that Kevin Costner yoke), Jeremy Irons , Dylan Moran, George Hook, Dave Fanning and parliamentary pin-up Brian Cowan. Mary, hoping to better me, took herself off to the national ploughing championships - like the welly-wearin bog warrior that she is - in order to catch a glimpse of Bearlgoir Hector, as the crowning achievement of our spot-the-celeb game. Instead all she got was a paparazzi snap of winking weatherman Ger Fleming.

And now I'm cross. Why? Cause that mustachioed orange-faced baxtard Marty Whelan never pulled my name from the drum. So now all I have is my imagination to whisk me onto the programme.
"Hello there Flash..." says Marty, the light playfully sparkling the glitter in his quivering moustache as he speaks.
"Is that your real name?" he continues, glancing up from his information card.
"Well obviously not Marty."
"Oh right, well it says here that you've been working in Cork airport, tell me any big celebrities passing through there?"
"Well, Marty, there's the likes of Dave Fanning and that, it's all on my website there."
"And..." she says with a smug chuckle, "have you ever seen me there?"
"No Marty."
"Oh... well."
"But I did see you in a newsagents the other day in Malahide, Marty"
"You did?"
"I did Marty. And I followed you home then Marty."
You did..."
"Yes Marty. I know where you live now Marty. I've been back a couple of times there now Marty. Lovely place Marty."
Marty now looks around somewhat nervously.
"And I befriended your youngest daughter there Marty. And she let me have privileged access to your home Marty."
"What the..."
"And I've taken a few pictures, Marty."
"You took...?"
"Yes, in fact I've brought some of them along here tonight..."
Marty lets out a small gasp as I whip out enlarged photos pasted to card and mount the first one facing camera two.
"Here's Marty getting into the shower." I flip to the next one.
"And here's Marty coming out of the shower. It's a certain favourite of mine this one, I like the little bit of suds on the moustache particularly.And here... Here's a picture of two men in gimp masks, doing... strange things to one another, and there in the background,in the leather shorts, it's... yes: Marty Whelan."
Marty has a frozen quizzical look on his face.
"And here," I say holding yet another picture upright,"Is Marty Whelan in drag."
I take a closer look.
"No wait.. that's actually Thelma Mansfield."
I take an even closer look.
"No, wait, I was half right, it's actually George Hamilton in drag, yes! I dunno how that got in there now."
I hesitate with the last picture privately reviewing it before I decide to flash it at the camera.
"... And this one... this one, well I'm not sure if I can show this one on the television Marty, it's... well, let's just say it's Sean Moncrieff with a Dyson." "Marty?"
But Marty is now after running out of the Mmntrose complex, trying to hail a cab on Nutley lane.
But all this is just in my dreams. Sigh! I may never get to show those photographs...

THE CORK FILM FESTIVAL (II)

Security


Watching this film was a little like working in an old hardware wholesaler. It was dank, seemed to emit a hum of fluorescent light across the cinema floor, and the Triskel Arts centre even smelt like weathered metal and grease. By bizarre coincidence, this film was also about working in an old harware wholesaler, where our hero hides himself in a box to see who's been nicking a few odd nails. Yes, that's it. The director was sitting behind me so I resisted the urge to do what Rock Hudson did during the first screening of 2001: A space Odyssey; that is, standing up and saying: "Could someone please tell me what the hell this is about?" You'd think from all this diatribe that I hated the film, but once I had adjusted to being ensconsed in the dreary film setting, it was engrossing and even endearing. Still, like masturbation with sandpaper, I'm not sure if the pleasure was worth the pain.

Frequently Asked Questions


Believe me, I had a few of those when this film was over. This is a Spanish film set in France, which means that there is not much keeling of womeeen and cheeeldren, but there is a man eating a croissant. A science fiction piece, it tells of a terrifying dystopia where women are our overlords. Just like a normal society except no-one can drive and PMS requisitions you a couple of personal days (joke!). It is also a society in which sensuality is not allowed, and you must give up your uterus to gain admission to the gestapo-like sisterhood of metacontrol. Not sure of the point they are making here except that it seems that to gain power femininity must be discarded, so power and control still seem to be a masculine aspect. Also, in a strange twist to the Nineteen-Eighty-Four formula, it is a man, Nano, who changes the female protagonist's view of the Doctine. So, an interesting film, but still prescribes to the still typically male-dominated arena of science fiction, which i think they were trying to distance themselves from.
Still, the scene where they destroy the Eiffel tower because of its phallic appearance is bloody hillarious, and will be of some solace to everyone who's had a run in with a rude parisian. There's another thing. No-one says "sacre bleu" or wears a beret. I'm sorry, but France to me is a stripey-vested old fella on a cobbled street corner chomping on a garlic. That doesn't make me ignorant, does it?

Zero Degrees of Seperation.

I saw the director Elle Flanders getting on a plane the next day. She wanted to know which way to her Ryanair flight, ignoring the Ryanair plane in front of her.
This film has stuck in my mind quite a bit, even though the synopsis didn't sound too appealling. "I wanna go see this maybe" says Donna, looking at the Film Festival programme, and I glanced at the blurb: "A unique journey through the complex lives of Israeli and Palestinian gays and lesbians in inter-ethnic relationships..." I glanced at her skeptically. "Come on," she said, her Aussie drawl stretching every syllable to its elastic zenith, "It's a bit a culchaaaaa"
"Culture, eh?"
"Na, na, na: culchaaaaaaaa"
The film, despite its promise of an insighful look at brown love in a warzone, was a treat: One of the Jewish protagonists, Ezra, challenges the border controls with an authority that outways theirs, making these encounters both engrossing and hillarious. His deadpan answer to the question "What is your desination" is "An orgy in the valley." The look of fear in the eyes of post-adolescent troops travels down the lens at the speed of light, the strain of the couples' differing political stances becomes a recurring theme throughout.
Oh, and we got a free badge. That swung it for me.

THE CORK FILM FESTIVAL (1)

Cork Recently had its 50th annual Film Festival. I decided to check it out, mainly 'cause I don't have a telly. Here is a selection:

Minotauromaquia: Pablo Into The Labyrinth

This is basically Wallace and Gromit in Spanish. Except Wallace has become Pablo Picasso and Gromit is transformed into a big ‘aul friendly beast of the underworld intent on eating poor old Wallace. For ten minutes we see Wallace wander around a labyrinth where he’s confronted with images of his own artistry. The Wrong Trousers are there, as is that yoke he uses to wash windows. Except that it’s not Wallace remember? It’s Pablo Picasso and so the things he meets are big plasticine doodles
which frighten the bejaysus out of him. How could ‘magic morla’ be used in such a scary adult way? Bosco must be rolling in his grave.

Jean Luc Picard was worried when he suddenly found himself in the audition line for creature comforts


The Exorcism of Emily Rose

A trouser-soilingly good scary film. Based on a true story (probably in the same way as Braveheart was historical and Fahrenheit 9/11 was a documentary) the film focuses on the trial of Father Moore, who seems a goodly man, if only for the fact that he’s on trial for something other than playing polishing the candle-holders with the alter-boys. In a series of flashbacks, we’re told of the fate of Emily, who starts off as a mile epileptic psychotic but ends up being possessed by six demons, including Hitler, Nero and even Lucifer. Honestly, at least Regan only had the devil – six is just plain greedy. Jennifer Carpenter does a convincing and terrifying turn as the embattled Emily Rose, without any pea-soup in sight. I like a good scary film, but this one almost made me have an accident. Honestly, at particular moments, I thought my rectum would prolapse, or at least leave the mark of Flash for future generations on the Cork Opera House seats. Upon leaving, I listened to the uppity techno-bable of the seasoned movie buff around me. “I think the use of music was executed with hitchcockian perfection” uttered one velvet-jacketed poseur; another may have said “I think the lighting was inconsistent and served only to labour the point on some occasions.” And then there was me: “I think I shat my pants!” Which would have been as effective as any review.

Emily Rose:
Never playfully dollop ketchup on your girlfriend’s forehead when she’s having her monthlies:
Click here

RID YOUR HOME OF CANADIANS OR YOUR MONEY BACK

I finally managed to oust all of the Canadian contingent of Cork. Clara had been gone for many months, Kim recently also toddled off to meet her, and Ellie – my roommate who taught me all about my ‘horny electricity’ – jetted off to sunny Bilbao to impress her whirlwind canuck-Irish temperance on an unsuspecting basque population. She’s probably one of the more explosive things to pass through that country in recent times.

The taxi-driver rapped on our door promptly at 5 a.m. on the morning of their departure, heard by everyone except Ellie and her fella Javi themselves. Not wanting to barge into her bedroom, I decided to call her by phone. I had to ring her several times, which is no mean feat considering the only way I can get reception is by pressing my face up against the third floor bathroom window or leaving the house entirely and going up to the grotto up the road where the Virgin Mary seems to be a good conduit for talking to more than just God. But she was smiling at me that day, I managed to place a call through to Ellie from our living room - and I gave Mary a thankful nod through the window from where we can see her glow in her neon-blue electric holiness. A few minutes later I heard a shuffle and a panicked ruckus, before they finally spilled out the door of 53 Ballyhooley Road for the last time. She knocked on my door to offer me an appreciative teary goodbye. She got in return a heartfelt pillow-muffled “nynnngg”.

As if clocking in for their Canadian-in-Cork shift, Clara and Kim returned just as Ellie left. It was nice to see them again though, especially Clara who had gone missing for an age and a half. It’s always interesting to hear a foreigner's take on things Irish, the absurdity of things buried in a peat-bog of multiple absudities, where oddities of our land are preserved but forgotten about.
"Your ads on T.V are crazy" Kim said with a poignant eloquence that somehow broke through her beery slurs, "every second one is for some sort of yogurt or something that helps your digestion. All the others are for loans. You guys have to stop spending money on expensive yogurts that help your digestion and then you wouldn't need loans." I was about to argue that Ireland isn't in fact obsessed with it's digestive tract when Clara kindly reminded me of that chat-up line I used on her: "Do you want to come in for a cup of tea? I've got peppermint tea, you know it's very good for your digestion..." More fool her though. The line actually worked.

Now that that double-act have again departed, Cork is more serene place. No longer is there a whiney north-American drawl to razor-blade through the silence, no longer does the beamish-and-dogshit Cork air have to carry the impossibly-loud octave of a people who must all live very far apart from one another 'cause all they seem to do is shout. And do you know what? I'm going to miss it. After spending so long bumping randomly into Canadians - after for so long not really believing it was a real country at all - the silence will be deafening.
Oh well, I've plenty of hillarious accents around me to keep me happy for a while. I do live in Cork after all.

CUCKOOS KNOB... ISN'T THAT AN ALE?

So I've left that middle age trollop that is the Wife of Bath. I cracked my medieval whip all over her ass and she's still annoying me. I'll go back to her in time, 'cause I'm not quite finished with the know-it-all whore. The Irishman in me is pumped up to full wife beating potential; I'm told by the Canadians and Aussies that I've surrounded myself with that it's an endownment of our angry celtic-viking blood, which is bollocks 'cause I've never laid a hand on any of those Canadians nor Aussies that I've surrounded myself with. Headbutted them all to f*ck, but never raised a fist.

After I wrote in PIMP MY BRIDE, I realised I know a real-life Wife of Bath. Recent nuptualissimo Knoola and her hubby Rimmer have recently bought a place in Bath, which is good 'cause they both need a wash. Probably a good thing they're leaving Wooten Bassett: Crapman highlighted some of their nearby towns, including "Sodom" and "Cuckoos Knob." Check for yourself, copy and paste their post code SN4 7DN into this website). As if the name "Wootten Bassett" wasn't bad enough, which doesn't sound rude as such but might as well have been called "flatulent dog" which is never pleasant.

Incidently I put in the postcode from when I lived in brighton, BN1 6DR and got this, which considering its being the gay capital of England, it's hardly surprising. Which by the way is NOT why I lived there. Ahem.
So, just to prove my heterosexuality, I'm off to whack a few ladies about the place.

YAHTZEE NAZI

Not having a television is bad for your mental health. Too many nights in the local, with no entertainment to go home to except a puzzle-book, a Scrabble board and a travel version of Guess Who. A shopping trolley on the way home from the pub becomes a veritible endophin-overloading medium of pleasure. I had Donna, my tiny wee Aussie flatmate pushing me in it up the topographical nazi that is the hill of Wellington Row. Her child-like muscles struggled with my portly frame, veering me this way and that until eventually crashing me into a car. A sing-song Cork cry rang out: "Be Careful!" signifiying that - the talented people that we were - we managed to whack against the only occupied parked car in the whole of the McCurtain Street environs.
Pure skill.
In an effort, then, to try and get us to spend more evenings at home not getting into mischief, Donna decided that buying dice was the only way to go -demonstating perfectly reasonable logic - and relax with some evening games of Yahtzee. I suggested nude wrestling but she wasn't going for it. I met her in the city centre and so began our quest to find dice. Toymaster, Smyths, the 2-Euro Store, both Euro Stores, The Pound Shop, the "Mmmad!" gadget shop, the other gadget shop, The Discount Store, the other Discount store, Other Realms, The Sports stores, Tescos, Dunnes, The English Market - none of them had dice, and Donna even found it hard to understand why newsagents didn't have them. I told her that lose dice weren't really stockable items, because most people lacked a degree of sanity that she lacked. So, our tails between our legs, we were about to head to the pub in consolation when we happened upon a small oldey-worldy toyshop called Pinochio's, where they stocked every variety of Donna's dice, whereupon she spent half an hour deciding on colours, and the another half-an-hour deciding on a size. This is a woman, after all, who spent a month trying to buy Jeans, and will only buy bog roll from Dunnes 'cause Tescos turd paper is "too expensive." So home we went to play Yahtzee, which is far shittier than our lost afternoon warrented; and do you know what else? It's perfectly playable in the pub.


Yahtzee: All you get is dice in a big box

WHERE'S MY FLOG YOU BASTARD

... so read an angry text from flogophile Crapman. He then had the audacity to ask me for a favour. Snivelling little f*cker. He wants me to help him think up his name for his website. Hmmm. What about something like this?

PIMP MY BRIDE

Another wedding came to the fore again recently, this time it was Sabs, a dear old friend of mine, from back in the mists of time, since the B.A days where it all began. Back then the medievalist whip I keep trying to crack now was but a stump, and now it's fully erect and whipping all over the place. Well kind of. At the moment I need some medievalist viagra, the Wife of Bath is giving me grief, the smelly whore.

But the Wife of Sabs was neither a whore, nor was she (as far as I'm aware) smelly. In fact, she was (as a homeless woman on the streets of Dundalk noted)only fabulous. I had to scarper, sadly, as something momentous was happening elsewhere in the country: after a long and exhaustive search, I had proved that I wasn't quite the unemployable wretch I thought I was, and Cork airport kindly came to my rescue, starting the day after the wedding. And just in the knickers of time too: things had got so bad that Crapman had recently offered me a tenner if I piggy-backed him from one end of the 'Nock to the other, and after getting as far as the bollards at Burrow Court, just metres from the Crapcave, he gave up on me and gave me 2 Euro for my trouble. I went out immediately and bought a wonka bar, to try and find that elusive fifth ticket, but there was no climatic moment where my poverty would be destroyed and my dreams were realised in an instant. Bastards.

Sorry, now, where was I? Ah yes I was talking about wives and stuff. Having recently hit 27, a startling thought just struck me. I remember many years ago... oh wait, imagine if you will a bubbly shimmer, accompanied by strokes on a harp. That's right - look out I think I'm having a Flashback. The harp strokes fade out and I'm in Washington D.C. with Hayman, and there's a fortune teller with my hand in hers and I'm wondering what the hell is going on. Moments ago, myself and Hayman had misinterpreted a sign saying "The Amazing Angelina - two sessions for five dollars" and went in trouserially augmented. Now she was telling my future and the 'aul happy lad is draining back to size. "You weeel haff a long life," she says in a Latino slur, "but samtheeeng weeel jchjappen to youuu that weeel mean youuu weeel nearly die." As I'm trying to get my head around her extra eeeeees and consonants that sound like a klingon's dying gasp, I finally cop that she was telling me that one day I'd neeeeeeeearly die. Great. But that isn't the worst of it. Wait - an interruption: Some Spanish flows in from another room - an older voice, female, where Angelina, amazing as she was retorts something back in defiance. I'd like to think she was saying "Mama I'm weeeth a very important client heeere, extremely jchjandsome by the way," but it was more likely "Angelina, what are you doing in your room?" - "Just telling some sucker his fortune, Mama, so shurrrrup, I'll be down for me bleedin' dinner in a minute." Then she settles back to gazing mystically in my hands, looks up and says (and this is the scary bit I was telling you about) "youuu weeel be marrieeed when youuu are twenteee-seben" - My heart drops - "and you weeel jchjave treeee cheeeeldren by the time youuu are theeirty." My heart crashes to the ground like Marlon Brando in a defective Bungee. Married when I'm 27? Three kids by thirty? Bloody hell!
So here I am, at 27, in my year of destiny. Some of the girls here in Cork and now looking for a wife suitable for me, and I realise that Angelina may have been Amazing after all. The girls never knew about that incident in Washington in 2002, which makes it all a creepy coincidence. So I hope the girls do a good job. They can hold auditions, maybe, and I'm sure I.T.V will approach them for a reality T.V series. They can call it: "Pimp my Bride" or "I'm In An Arranged Marriage - Get Me Out Of Here!" Send a picture, along with measurements and a list of likes and dislikes (including bedroom openness) to findawifeforflash@hotmail.com. The search is on. Apparently.
(The Wife of Bath need not apply.)

The Wife of Bath. What a ho.

CHRONICLES OF HERNIA ADDENDUM

Knoola was very upset that she wasn't mentioned in the last Flog update. That was very inconsiderate of me, given that she's now up the duff. Congratulations Knoola on the baby, I hope you'll name it Cian after its father.

CHRONICLES OF HERNIA PART II:
THE LION, THE WITCH, THE WARDROBE, THE ARTDESK, THE DOUBLE-BED, THE TELLIES, ABOUT FIFTY BOXES...

The crapmove was on: Crapman and Mrs. Crapman needed my muscles in the 'Nock: They were busy moving out to the Shinny. Loughshinny, to give it its proper name, is about as boggerville as Dublin gets. The weekend was a disorientating trip that dotted between the 'Nock, the Shinny, Finglas and Woodies DIY. So, a weekend replete with glitz and glamour I'm sure you'll agree.

The best thing was the chance to be a white van man for a couple of days. I suggested that we all had to take off our shirts, but we decided against it because our frying-pan tans weren't defined enough. That, and we lacked that drug-user slimness of the average white van man. For some reason, when you're locked in a tight cabin with two other blokes, your sex drive becomes worryingly high, so that any half-decent blondie out woalking showing the tiniest bit of skin must be eye-poppingly observed almost to the point of crashing.
It was great.
To pass the time on our multiple journeys, multiple games of Yellow-reg were played, meself, Crapman, Wayner and the Crapdad whacking the pure shit out of each other everytime a UK registration plate came into view. Which was a bit ugly on the Belfast road on a Sunday when everyone was heading home after the weekend. Especially when I was sitting in the middle, riding bitch. As if manual labour wasn't tough enough, I had to endure beatings.
Ye know, in case I slackened up.

The Crapmum still hasn't forgiven me for saying "she was spouting the worst" of the lewed language BOOZED AND CONFUSED (March 2005), or indeed for referring to her as the Crapmum. Ahem. So, later that night, as we partook of some much needed MSGs courtesy of the local chinker, she proved me wrong by utterances so blue I can hear the Caribbean calling her for its sky back. My own mum won't let me go down to the Crapcave anymore, she says the crapmum is a bad influence on me. I told her to "f**k off and get c**ting real."

This is the only picture anyone has ever taken of anything in Loughshinny.It's a big hole.
(In the picture, not Loughshinny.)

INTRODUCING FLASH 'THE COMPASS' BOGI

Recent changes on flatmates saw Jax move out to the other side of Cork City, just below the cusp of prime Knocknaheeny real-estate. Knocknaheeny, for the uninitiated is an idyllic quiet suburban model village, occupied by friendly approachable locals and surrounded by well-kept fields, and on a bright sunny day, I like nothing better than passing these fields and counting the burnt out cars, keeping an eye out for any fresh graffititied murals or heart-warming community messages.

It’s just such a pity it’s so far away, just over 50 minutes by foot, at a hastened pace. Undeterred by my failed short-cut attempt which almost had me walk through some fella’s back garden and go off the edge of a cliff (Somewhere Over the Ballyhooley Road), I tried to devise a short cut out towards Jax’s new gaff. I whipped out a map and plotted my course, and set out in the Mediterranean-style noontime heat, to discover the ultimate short-cut to Jax’s place.

An hour and twenty minutes later I finally arrived at her Monastery Hill address, walking with my own body weight in sweat in my shoes, with a fresh frying-pan tan from my hairline to my farmers-tan borders. I was welcomed with a ritualistic slating and – thankfully – a cool can of Carlsberg ™ .

“Why didn’t you ask for directions?” I was asked.
My response was one of wide–eyed incredulity.
“Because I have a penis,” I calmly responded.

THE ELECTRIC GIGALO

Honestly, who came up with the term 'Quiet drink?' We all know it doesn't exist. It's like one of those euphemisms designed to lessen the impact of the drama of what it really entails. It's like you saying "I'll be back in a minute" when we know you mean "I'll see you when Tibet is free," or saying differently-abled when we know you mean cappers. Oopsie, going to hell for that one.

Our newbie flatmate Canuck Ellie - yes another bloody Canadian, I dunno I must smell like moose or something - suggested I join her for a pint, so I went down to the Le Cheile. Ellie has been in cork for quite a while, some six years or so, so she's morphied into quite the dialectal hybrid. Which means she won't say "c*nt" but she'll end all of her sentences with "do you know" (pronounced j'unno) and throw in a "like" for good measure too. J'unno like? So a pint was had, and then onto the Newport beer garden for another pint. We talked about who we know who's gay and who's not.
"You can tell, like a gay guy from a mile off, j'unno?"
"Can you?"
"Yeah It's easy when you're a girl, like, j'unno?"
"Well then," I said, purely to test her of course:"How can you tell I'm not gay?"
"Aw Kevvy, like," she says, "you're not gay... j'unno.You have that... sort of... horny electricity... j'unno?"
I couldn't help looking down at my crotch.
"What, can you see it?"
Horny electricity? What the hell is that? I wondered privately that if I stuck my willy into the battery compartment of a CD player could I make it work? Perhaps I should experiment with this physical aspect of myself I never knew I had. Imagine Donna coming back from Dublin to find me trying to rodger her iPod. Also, how much light could I produce by making sweet love to a shaft of a torch?
"Horny electricity?" Says I, "well tell you what, rub this up and down and see if balloons will stick to you."

Then we went onto L.V's for another drinkie-poo. There, out of the blue, I bumped into three fellas from school, two of whom I hadn't seen in almost ten years I'd say. They were there for the L.V's 'Craichouse' comedy night, doing some stand-up would you believe. So more booze flowed, and things got blurrier and blurrier. The acts were class, fair play to the lads; Ellie got a big kick out of them, except at Colin Ryan's version of "Sunday Bloody Sunday", retitled "Tampon bloody tampon." In fact, Ellie's face was as funny as the act itself.
A quiet drink? pah! The beers were drained as was my 'horny-electricity'. Which is virtually on permanent power-cut anyway.

BLOODY STUDENT

Fly up? Check. Food on face? Check. Stray snots? Check.
Thus, with pretended elegance and great aplomb I delivered my paper at the medieval conference. As I whittled on, I saw some brows furrow in an attempt to grasp what the hell I was going on about, but after twenty minutes these was an appreciative applause. Phew, I had got through it. As one representative of the University of Geneva said: “I liked that book you gave us in twenty minutes!” Okay so I packed a lot in, but it was worth it, when else would I be in a position to address my peers and seniors in such a dramatic background as Oxford? Even the frolicking Lincoln university students could not hamper our collective spirit of erudite playfulness. Even working in such close affiliation with Trinity representatives didn’t seem to matter. It was all a big back-slapping wine-sipping academic love-in, and I was lubed up to the nines. The event degenerated into a faux-sophis drinking session, carrying ten pizza’s from Pizza hut back to the co-organisers apartment, which just so happened to be a former crash-pad of none other than Billy Shakespeare. He was a guy what wrote some plays and stuff.
We polluted the ghostly magnificence of the place with improper table manners and our teaching of the C-word to a Dutch student. I realised I was edging towards the Oxford profanity of debasing the 500-year old majesty of the town with my presence.
Just like a bloody student.
Aw well, more lube anyone?

I FARTED SO I'LL FINISH

Oxford is a city that has to worm its way around a collected mass of some 39 colleges, like polyfilla working its way between the cracks. In a recent article, The Econonomist said: "The university is essentially a collection of medieval monasteries run like a workers' co-operative." I don't really associate grandiose end-of-ear party mayhem with monkish behaviour. There was no dark age solemnity here, just first and second years wandering around ridiculously dressed up to the nines for their end of year exams, followed by some beer-soaked after-party revelry. From this vantage point, you could see people who a few hours before looked like thay were classically trained to reingest potential farts, degenerate into a gaseous escape of chaos.

I stood on the sidelines and observed the local customs, as part of the tweedy conference entourage. Oxford city is actually a giant campus, with highly condensed landmarks within a small radius. It was a tourist dream, and I had to do something a bit touristy within the small window I had available. So I went on the Oxford Story, a Dvblinia type of exhibition. There was no-one about so I felt a bit like Britney Spears, having to shop after hours to avoid mixing with the "normies" of society. The tour began by having to sit in this old fashioned student's pew, that turned out to be in fact a car on what was a fancified ghost train. Through my earpiece I could hear Mastermind's Magnus Magnusson explaining the sights around me. The "train" takes you up a type of winding staircase, and gave me the sheer willies as it creaked and cranked my 12 stone frame up its steep incline. I wasn't so self conscious about my weight as I was then, especially as Magnus seemed to explain stuff quicker than the feeble mechanics seemed to be able to pull me. I was afraid for a while he'd be talking about Oxford's 20th century alumni while I was still looking at Roger Bacon (13th century). To make matters worse, I envisaged a catastrophic snap, leaving me spindle down the track Temple of Doom-style
having to fist-fight some Indian demonic cult members as I did so, before crashing dramatically out the front door, plowing through a heap of ridiculously-dressed-up exam goers, and eventually getting lodged in some 15th century bookshelf in the Bodleian library.
But wait, what was that? Magnus Magnusson, the bloke with the learned air from the brainiest programme on telly just said: "in the Middle Ages, people thought the Earth was flat..."
Tut, tut tut. That is one of those myths that just won't go away. This offensive miscarriage of history was perpertrated by Legend of Sleepy Hollow author Washington Irving in the 19th century, in a single sentence. Let the word go forth. Think about it though, how can any civilisation that observed the stars possibly not give the Earth a spherical shape? Ah Magnus, you're only a tool.

Magnus Magnusson
Look at him there. What a spa.

MY CUSTOMS CUSTOM

Cracking my medievalist whip, I ventured to Oxford. My trip began in the traditional way for me, with me being stopped In U.K customs for a reason I have yet to determine. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've flown into England and I haven't at least been stopped momentarily. It's not as if I wear my "Al Qaeda Aren't So Bad" tee-shirt every time I fly. Or do I have an I.R.A Doppelganger out there somewhere? No wonder I was so nervous going to Belfast, I must have a "quality" that says "This guy's trouble." If not a quality, I do have a tee-shirt that says that. Note to self.
This time I was stopped, taken aside and asked to fill out this questionnare, while the copper flicked through my passport asking me what I was doing in the U.S in 2002 et cetera. I just calmly accepted the drumming of questions with a resigned patience, I felt like one of the usual suspects in a police line-up. Afterwards I heard the familiar:
"Nothing to worry about sir, just a random check," He said as he was cramming an endoscopic camera in a tender place. Okay, so I made that last bit up, but I did laugh to myself about the intrusiveness of this "random check," and wondered about the mathematical possibility that 8 out of ten visits should result in a "random" check. I mean, how long would it be until I heard:
"Sorry Sir, it's just a random strip search."
"Sorry Sir, it's just a random crevice inspection."
"Sorry Sir, it's just a random brutal beating."
"Sorry Sir, it's just a random forced-confession signing."
"Sorry Sir, it's just a random being jailed for 15 years for a crime you did not commit due to a gross perversion of justice."
"Oh, no problem, you're just doing your job!"

Mind you, maybe they're all reading the Flog and have targeted me as a trouble-maker.
Oops.

So let me finish off by saying how much I admire Her Majesty's Police Force. They are consummate professionals, and their helmets don't look in the least bit like breasts. The next time I fly to Englan I know a part of me will be sad if my old friends don't give me at least a quick acknowledging penetrating stare.
"Have you forgotten me?" I'll say, "I feel so, so common..."

THEY ONLY COME OUT AT NIGHT

The next day I found myself in Belfast, a city I've had no reason to visit in my 26 years on this Earth. Clara and Bonnie were shocked, before I explained to them that for the longest time it didn't offer much to the youthful southern male unless you liked getting your head kicked in.
Naturally I was terrified, and the uneasy quiet that descended on the city centre circa eight o'clock in the evening didn't help matters much. It was a bit like the opening sequence to 28 days Later, except spookier. I couldn't shake the feeling of "What do they know that we don't?" whenever I saw a lone individual lurking the streets at night like we were; no doubt they had emerged from their bunkers in order to scavange some food for their trembling terrified families.
"Why is it so quiet?" Clara mused.
The truth hit me.
"Because they come out at night!"
"Who?"
"The Protestants!"

The two Canadians persuaded me to get up the next morning and take one of the Black Cab Tours of Belfast. Now, for those of you not in the know, this a tour that is is scarier than any Ghost Train in existence, it kicks that Ghostbus tour thingy's ass. For the first forty-five minutes, as the driver drove us into the heart of the Shankill road loyalist stomping ground, I couldn't shake off the feeling I was entering the confines of Mordor, or I was a bit like the bit in Star Wars where they infiltrate the Death Star. The Tour guide was great, encouraged the two Canadians to get out and take a few photos, but added with no sense of comfort to me, that he himself was too scared to get out of the cab. So, folks, I dressed in a strormtrooper outfit and walked across the Shankill Road heartland, being sure to keep my mouth shut the whole time. The tour guide had pointed out one mural of interest:
"Notice," he said in apt ghost-story register, "that this painting of a UVF gunman is painted in such a way that the gun seems to be pointing at you no matter where you stand!"
"Look at him!" said Clara in a loud and proud voice, as we were in the middle of the estate, "he knows your Catholic!"
My eyes darted around to see if anyone was pointing at me screaming Invasion-Of-The-Body-Snatchers style, but thankfully no-one had hear her. Nevertheless I was terrified that Clara's not-too-unsubtle voice should boom some secret information to the rather stern-looking locals.
Somehow I managed to get back into the cab trousers-unsoiled. I felt a little more comfortable I have to admit once we had driven into the Catholic side, and especially when the cab driver himself revealed his own particular bias. And when I say more comfortable I felt that for the first time I could actually speak. And just in case we were in any doubt as to the nature of his affiliation, he took us into the Sinn Fein headquarters no less. And further doubt dissipated when he was in the middle of a stirring oration about Bobby Sands and some mate of his opened the cab's passenger door and had a chat with him. Clara thought it was hillarious:
"So Irish!" she said.

So he drove us back to the hostel and I felt like a new man. I was so relieved I felt I was inhaling for the first time that day. I had never been so self-conscious about my accent. Nor had I ever felt so partisan: I couldn't help but look at Clara disapprovingly as she took a picture of Oliver Cromwell, knowing that he dispossessed my own ancestors. Now though, with a shake of the head and with comfort of distance, I am able to divorce myself of the age-old conflict to lament on the tragedy of Northern polictical history, for both sides. Still, being at its crucible of the historical drama, I couldn't help but feel my heart being pushed in one direction.

After the tour, the fear was not over. It followed me all the way up the Antrim coast, along every winding road, at every roundabout and intersection. For being driven by a Canadian - thats a real real trouser-soiling experience.

STRANGE BRU

Hey folks, I'm back, ye all miss me?

Well Clara came back into town once more, despite strict instructions i left with the immigration authorities no to let her back into the country under any circumstances. My constant correspondence with the Special Branch, plying them with photos of her with the caption "known terrorist" seems to have gone unnoticed. So she slipped through the net somehow, and I met her and her mother in the Porterhouse once more. We visited the whiskey distillery in Dublin, where I warmed my cockles (yes I said "cockles") on some free Jamesons. It gave your a warmer glow per euro than the arse-rapers at the Guinness Brewery I tell you that much for free. Clara volunteered her mum to be an official Whiskey taster, a job she enjoyed with a relish that belied her previous "Oh I don't drink much at all!"
Come To Ireland, And Leave Your Liver: Bord Failte you can have that one for free.

The next day they coaxed me on a bit of a road trip. Bonnie (that's Clara's mom) decided to rent a car, and so began one of the most hair-raising adventures of my life. Clara wouln't ride shot-gun, as she was too terrified, and all I'll say is that my fringe has whitened considerably and I'm sure my underpants received a couple of fresh understains on the journey. One unexpected problem came from the layout of roads around Newgrange. If you choose to drive up the wrong end, so that Newgrange is conveniently right in front of you, you are told to drive for half an hour in towards Slane, where no doubt you'll get lost again like we did, and then get ushered like a tourist-cow into a little exhibit-pen, where you're milked for all your worth if you don't have your purse-strings tied up in a shipman's knot.

Yet Brú na Bóinne was passage-tomb-tastic. The five-thousand year old mysticism, mystery and majesty interrupted only by the whiney drawl of a Canadian accent. Well at least Clara has learned one valuable lesson. It was older than the Pyramids. It was an interestingly spooky experience: When the tour guide switched out the lights to emulate the winter solstice, the old lady next to me asked whether or not there was ghosts. What didn't help was that when total darkness was achieved, she grabbed my arm in a panic. I got a bit of a shock, which serves me right, as I was just supressing the urge to do owl impressions.
Bye the bye, I just got a text message from Clara: "totally smuggled and swiss army knife into the airport..."
I told them! But would they listen?

The Brú na Bóinne Visitors Centre sometimes likes to hide in the woods.
It can be coaxed out by biscuits, clucking sounds and American accents

When you arrive in the Boyne Valley, no need to remember to look at signs. This plonker delights in reminding you.

When visiting Knowth, be careful. This is NOT a passage-tomb. His name is Paddy and he just wants to be left alone.

THE BARTENDER, THE BLACK, THE PARROT, THE HORSE, THE BUTTERFLY, THE TASMANIAN DEVIL AND THE STAGS

Ventured Dublinward again I met up with Sarah, a wee Clontarf cherub, and Jim O'Hara, a good mate and complete English wanker. He was over for an English stag do, which made him the bane of Dublin existence. Yet this was no ordinary Stag do. Oh no. The groom was almost 75 years of age, and his entourage wasn't much younger. The group probably had an average age that rivalled that of the Rolling Stones. Still, it must have been hard for them. Viagra took care of that.
To my surprise, Crapman and Awn-ya turned up, in a rare venture into the city centre. I refer to her as Awn-ya here, as I got into trouble for referring to her as the "Crapwife" in a recent Flog entry. Her sister Knoola called her to rat on me: "Did you see what Flash wrote on the Flog, he called you the Crapwife?!", but the Crapwife herself turned out not to be so crap, who explained to her the etymology of the term, being a compound noun derivitive of Crapman. Why Crapman is called Crapman is an etymological and historical quagmire you will thank me if I don't clarify.
A laugh was had, and the crap jokes spewed out. For James' benefit, Crapman wheeled out an old favourite of Hayman's. And by old favourite I mean he tells the gag every time you meet him (it starts off as if it's going to be a racist joke, but afterwards you realise it's not so don't worry!):
"A black man walks into a pub with a pub with a Parrot on head. The Barman says: 'Where did you get that?' and the Parrot says: 'In Africa, it's f*ckin full of 'em!'"
Anyway, suitably steamed we made our way home on the drinklink, where a red-faced blathered aged drunk decided to sit down next to Crapman. The look of mild panic on his face was hillarious, he looked like a small boy trying to comprehend why Santa may not exist. This look only intensified when I said:
"He seems like a lovely fella, do you want me to introduce you to him?!"
The fella chatted away to nothingness, hardly comprehensible, pausing every once and a while to emit a slurpy puffy laugh. Well, it was either a laugh or he was farting through his head. We only deciphered a couple of sentences through the nonsense:
"He says he can speak in morse code (slurpy puffy laughter), not f*ckin likely!"
"And what code are you speaking in buddy? " is what I wanted to say but didn't. It's probably safer not to penetrate his booze-cloud, I thought, a sudden snap into reality might've been too much for him, he was so heavily saturated it probably would've given him the bends.
The second time coherence almost surfaced was: "blahbubblebinggrizzlerangdibbler (think the Tazmanian Devil highly excited) ringblitherburpwillybummerwuzy, (slurpy puffy laughter) they said drink was involved..."
"Really?" I said, "Do you think?"

The following day I went down to Awn-ya's gaff in the afternoon, to watch Crapman pick up a bucketload's-worth of doggie poo from the back garden. Just the sort of social activity that all friends should enjoy together. Having watched that for 20 minutes I somehow tucked into a mammy-made meal and took myself into town to meet Butterfly and Courto. A swift chat, a brief lament for lost loves, a gentle hug and a friendly smile, and I was on the road again, back to the 'Nock once more, back into
Awnya's to test out her new bar, the same bar that I wrote of a few Flog-entries ago that me and crapman had nearly died whilst transporting there. After much intoxication we finally agreed to Christen it "The Black and Parrot." The "Afro-American and Parrot was suggested, but it was quickly discarded. I told a joke to christen the bar:
"A Horse walks into a bar, and the Barman says: 'Where did you get that?' The Horse says: 'What?' And the Barman says:
'Oh sorry, I though you were someone else...'

PUBE GRUB

The Flog seems to have gone full circle, I find myself here again in sunny Brighton. There are some changes to the landscape; firstly the Western Pier had suffered a sad death since I last visited, a victim of an arson attack in recent times. Its blackened corpse still stood definantly against the blue horizon, a grisly charred skeleton that emitted a strange sort of beauty as the sun descended, painting the shadowy frame with its ruddy licks.
The other change to the landscape is that Clara was here; coincidently, I find myself visiting her here almost on the anniversary of my last visit, which also made it on the Flog. The weather was hungover and Clara was damn hot, or perhaps it was the other way around. To take advantage of the sunshine, Clara bought herself a frisbee, despite the fact that the beach was blacker than the Western Pier with people. Throwing it would have resulted in - at worst - a fight, or - at best - a nicked frisbee. Clara was giggling as she opened the packaging on the Frisbee.
"What is it?" says I. She pointed to the packaging which read "Not suitable for children under three due to small parts."
"That's got to be one heck of a three-year-old that tries to swallow a frisbee," says Clara. I tapped the label on the red plastic.
" Sorry, not Frisbee: 'Flying Disc'"
"Correction, Professional Flying Disc "
I was nominated by some mysterious non-verbal bitch-whipped method to carry around said 'Flying Disc' for the remainder of the day, never even getting to see its maiden flight. Probably a good thing though, I'm suspicious of any game which a dog could beat me at. A dog, I tell you. Evolution happened for a reason, damn it.

I met up with some old buddies there, all the old Blimey's crowd. I lived in Brighton for half a year about, spending more time that was healthy in a small pub on the Western Road that was then called Blimey O'Reilly's. Of course, with a name like that most Irish people would avert it like the plague, assuming it to be pornographically twee and oirish in the Tom-Cruise-and Nicole-Kidman-starring-in-Far-And-Away sort of a way. Yet, It's there where I warmed my barstool with many a Guinness-fart, and endured potato-farmer jokes and single-handedly financed its overhaul and metamorphosis into the hip, chilled-out The Jugger pub. From there, I gained my stout buddha-belly, from there I developed a taste for the world famous British Kebab, originating in India. Ah, it was good times.
So on my return to Brighton, I met Lyndsay and Simon, two of my highly traumatised ex-barpersons, along with Dave, one of the old regulars, and it was like slipping on an old glove. An old glove that was sweaty and smelt like booze.

Speaking of such tasty images, I savoured the tastes of Brighton with Clara and company. Well maybe savoured is too strong a word. One occasion had us plowing into some pub grub in the Bath and Arms in the lanes (I name them for shame), only to get to the bottom of the dish to find what could only be a soft curly pube sitting at the bottom. We all gasped, and Clara's Friend Rachel gagged.
The Naked Chef, how are you. Why do I immortalise in the Flog things that are more likely to scar me for life?


The Western Pier: One more payment and it's mine!

SOMEWHERE, OVER THE BALLYHOOLEY ROAD...

Work-dos are strange things. Seeing persons out of their natural habitat, behaving like human beings instead of the mindless drones that the Anonymous Multinational has cultivated utterly resores your faith in humanity. It's a bit like seeing your teacher out and about around the town and not stowed away in the classroom cupboard as expected.
Anyway, it was clear that everyone needed to get out of their cupboards and relieve executive stress in their own unique way - and as public masturbation is still a taboo, it mostly manifested itself in excessive alcohol intake. In fact, it came close to public masturbation when Barry whipped out his baby Barry to exhibit his new piercings. I hesitate to immortalise that event on The Flog as my therapist advised me that "I need to forget". Still, the nightmares are becoming less frequent.

So we rolled from the house party to the Franciscan Well, and from there to the Brog (as usual). Several things of great interest happened I'm sure, but my toxicant-affected brain now confuses them with old episodes of Rainbow. Imagine my surprise to turn around to see George snogging Zippy, and Bungle telling Jeffrey that he hated his "f*ck*n guts" and that he "dressed like a homo."

At 3:00 AM I left the festivities and began the trek up to Ballyhooley Road. I decided to an alternate route, you know just to mix it up a bit. I then decided to try a short cut, so I veered off Wellington Road (I think) and tryied to see if I could find some sexy route down towards St.Lukes Cross. What I in fact did do was end up in some guy's back garden, just as he swung around the house on his way home from the club.
Startled, he looked at me.
"Er sorry mate, just looking for a short cut."
To my relief, he broke out in a braod smile and said, "no shortcut there boy, just a cliff!"
I realised I was wavering drunkenly by a sheer drop, and I could see my house in the distance, tiny and unattainable. Two or three more steps and I would've been halfway home, probably minus my life. I was looking for a short cut but that would've been takin the piss.
So there I was, to quote the Rainbow themesong: "Up above the steets and houses." I rolled home again eventually, and after survivng a indiana-jones-esque death-defying moment, I fell over a pair of boots in the hallway with an echoing, house-shaking thud. I hurried back back to my cupboard where I belong, putting a sign outside stating that I was not to allowed out under any circumstances without adult supervision.

FLOGOFAILING

In the Anonymous Multinational and moments ago Mary, a disgruntled Flogophile, referred to me as a "disgrace" for not not updating the old Flog. She threw her nose up at me in contempt, and with a single venomous look in her eye she spat on my resolve and my boring un-relate-worthy life. I laughed it off, but inwardly I cried.
Flogging has been difficult this week, it's been busy and I've hardly had time for a fart or a heartbeat. I'm trying to do several things at once right now, (1) writing a bit of this medieval whip-cracking thesis, (2) eating a sandwich, (3) logging a call from a woman who thought she'd have her computer before the weekend and oh my God how is she going to do her work now that she's leaving and can't take her laptop with her and I hope that I realise how I've ruined her day but like oh my God what a sexy accent I have anyway. (4) Writing this bollocks, (5) continue an inner daydream where there is no such thing as computers, Federal Express and Americans (irrate ones). Crapman, the bollocks, has just sent me this cartoon:

I feel like i might cry again.

THE CHRONICLES OF HERNIA

I put my stab-proof vest on last weekend, Crapman was in trouble in Limerick, and only his faithful sidekick could help. I arrived half-expecting to find him hovering above an easily-escapable death trap, possibly a vat of rats with pre-poisoned teeth or something less expensive, with a candle slowly burning through a rope. But no, it was worse than that. Crapman, and the Crapwife (Awn-Ya) was in the middle of a furniture-removal nightmare.

And so the tetris began; Crapman slotted furniture in the back of the van so tightly I was sure that some rows of furniture were sure to disappear. Sadly though, 1970's computer games have little basis in reality. Wouldn't it be great if you were being chased by some stab-happy Limrecians and all you'd have to do is eat some fruit and then you can chase after them and chomp them pac-man style? Or if you could single-handedly deflect an alien invasion, as they descended twards the earth in nice, orderly and predictable fashion? Or if you died you could get a continue as long as you had sufficient change in your pocket? imagining that last one, I see myself at the pearly gates, St. Peter looking disappovingly at my tissue, lint, and cents that I fished out of my pocket and plonked in his hand. "Quickly!" I say, "Give that to God, before the countdown runs out!"

Unfortunately though, life 'aint a video game, and no matter how tightly Crapman packed, nothing disappeared. Yet he still managed to get it all in. Tight and firm.
Man, I bet he's good in bed.
Well, maybe not that good: As myself and Awn-Ya made our way back to Dublin with a fish-tank on our laps. Minus the fish of course, we had carefully packed them in freezer bags, which must've scared the shit out of the fish as alongside the icons for meat and poultry, there was a little fish icon. The poor little guys probably thought they were destined to be breadcrumbed and grilled like so many of their mates. So, when we swung by a hole of a McDonalds in Roscrea, Fish somehow didn't seem the most savory item on the menu. And in the unsavoury little hole of a McDonalds in Roscrea, that was quite an achievement.

Four dead legs later, we arrived in Finglas, where Crapman heroically deconstructed our Tetrised load. Here Crapman was low-tech, as he had switched from Tetris to Jenga, loading up the storage facility to dangerous heights. It was only when we got back to the Nock did the real physical challenge begin. Awn-Ya had bought a whopping great big yoke that was supposed to be table. It was basically a big tree that was fashioned everso slightly to look like a little less like a tree. As beautiful as it was, this item of furniture had as much weight as it had beauty, and pulling it into the temporary crap-cave wasn't too fluid let's just say. Hernia time.
No problem for two super-hero types like us, however, and in fact we were in more mortal danger tucking into our celeboratory Abrakebabra's afterwards. So now, along with my biceps and my triceps, my stomach lining no longer liked me. I felt like I might be going to those pearly gates sooner than I thought.
Game over.
No continues.
(And no, I didn't go for the fish.)


Tetris: A bit like masturbating with sandpaper

IN KILKENNY WITH KIM PENNY

(and Donna Wescott, but she doesn't rhyme)

Our planned trip to Kilkenny finally blossomed, after much stopping and starting, which was incidently a bit like the bus journey there. Donna, with a sudden hankering for peanuts, had a fumble in the overhead luggage compartment as the bus lurched around a particularly vicious corner, and nearly did a graceful twirl down the stairs and through the emergency exit, out into a pot-hole-frenzied boreen, rolling into a nearby field with some nonchalant cows who looked in desperate need for exactly that sort of excitement.
Luckily though me in my heroic manliness saved her from such a fate. And by heroic manliness I mean I got in the way.

They call Kilkenny the Marble City, which is ironic in a way as everyone in the town seems to have lost 'em. There was so many stag and hen parties out that night running amok that I felt like I was on Animal Farm, there were horny hens clucking in one corner and stags clashing antlers in the other. And there was me, Kim, Donz and Scary Mary and her extended family in the middle of the sweaty animal melange of Matt The Miller's. One bestial stag grabbed Donna's hair in a frenzy of give-us-a-kiss schoolboyishness, but all he got was a kick-in-the-balls. I was, for a brief time, caught in the middle of a hen party at the precise moment a male stripper started doing his thing, but I assure you it was just a unhappy coincidence. Ahem.

Kim, the birthday girl, left us a wee bit early, caught up being bauld in a herd of stags, which left me an Donz walk home together to the hostel. It was a pleasant night, not too cold, the air filled with kebab-tinted wafts the sound of football-chant melodies. Donz, a devout veggie was struck by the drunken munchies so bad, that she even considered crossing the threshold of Abrakebabra (Or Ab k ba ra, judging by the sign outside), and only turned back when she saw that queue: "Nah" she said, trying a Pizzeria: "Nah" she said when she saw the queue there. We settled for eating more peanuts, scoffing a packet on the stairs of our hostel, regardlessly scooping stray ones off the wholey unwholesome carpet. Here there was no bus jerking around corners, but our balance on those steps were less than steady. A bus-swerve moment seemed imminent, but heroically we survived, and the only thing we rolled into was our beds.
I awoke to find some girl bending right over me, hovering seductively above my pelvic region, fumbling at something. My early morning brain tried to process the scene in front of me, and I remembered my last act was polishing off those peanuts. Was she trying to steal our packet?
"Are you looking for my nuts?" I thought I heard myself say.

MY SILKY MILKY IN CLONAKILTY

I awoke on Saturday morning and there was a stranger in my bedroom.
It was peering at me through a crack in the curtains, prodding me awake with piercing unfamiliar eyes. My bleary friday night consciousness tried to distinguish between my dreamworld and the environs of my bedroom, and as my wakeful focus kicked in I tried to put a name to my unexpected guest.
It was sunshine.
It's vague familiarity was clearer to me now, I remembered seeing it as a child, and I thought I had seen it between blinks last summer. I flicked up my blinds and welcomed it in; I would say it was an old friend but we never really understood each other. I don't know it well enough to care, and it gives me a ruddy scarlet rash.

It was the perfect day for a visit to Clonakilty though; The crazy inhabitants of 53 Ballyhooley road and I had this mad idea about getting out of the city for a while. As if the gargantuan skyscrapers of Cork were hemming us in, giving us concrete clautrophobia and we were being choked with the smoke of this sprawling metropolis. So we walked to Inchadoney from Clonakilty town to spend the day at the beach, little aware that it was a two hour round-trip on foot. Which was scarcely enough time for a paddle, a game of frisbee and a mini-picnic and a fart, but somehow Donna managed to fit the last one in. Or out, whichever way you look at it.

It meant that a visit to Hayman was right out; and I had to text him with the words "I'm stuck in Cork", words that could only be worsened by replacing the word "Cork" with "Beirut". I Jest though, I love this town, even if the word "cork" seems to be endowed with a certain phonetic harshness, a raspy spit of a placename that has probably filtered through to the fierce effrontery of Cork city culture.

When we returned to Ballyhooley though, I was in for a shock. My milky, silky Irish skin had been attacked. That morning visitor had pinched my nose, cheek and forehead with a rosy glow, not enough to be painful, but enough to be a source of wonderment as to how someone can get sunburnt in early April. And certainly enough to be embarrassing to the bejaysus.
Sunshine. What a prick. Next time he tries to get into my room I'm going to kick the shite out of him.

BORED AT WORK

I get a lot of requests for mentions in my Blog. Just there Mary was sobbing gently to herself in the Anonymous Multi-national, cry "why, why oh why am I not on the Flog?"
"You have to do something interesting," says I, "to star in me Flog, for don't you know that's I'm a highly interesting guy with a highly interesting life."
"But how can I do something interesting?" she says,
"You have to do something," I said, blowing non-chalantly on my nails, "even if I have to make it up..."
Just then she hopped up on the table, and did a large backwards summersault and grabbed onto the rafters. Two ninjas took that as their cue to break in through the corregated ceiling.
"I will do the break of you aieeeee!" said one with a bad lip sych and dialogue that should be on engrish.com.
"I will also Mary-san" says the other, and there followed aflurry of complicated and highly cinematically-pleasing swooping moves, whic looked doubly cool when they purposefully went in slow-motion for a few seconds. When the cloud of violence dispersed, the two ninjas were to be seen in a heap on the ground, with contorted twisted bodies. Then the two ninjas were replaced by two more and Mary dealt with him in a way that's too exciting for me to even write. After them two more replaced them, and then two more and then two more after that. It went on right through my second break.
"I wanna be in the Flog too!" said Maedhbh, who hopped into a vat of hot oil and dealt with Mary-san in her own way. That was my favourite part, if I'm to be honest. Just then George Bush came in and shook her hand.
"On behalf of the people of the Unicef stake of Amigos, of which I am Presiment, I wish to thank you for ridding the planet of the evil alien terrorist bisexual Ninjas." Then when the spectacle was over, they filed carefully back to their desks, wiping away the oil and sweat from their crevices.

"What can I do that's interesting?"
I shook my head and tried to not make it obvious that I had been a million miles away.
"erm, uh..I can't possibly think..." says I.

THE TELLYLESS MARTYR

Being a bloke, I have a perfect licence to expect the world to stop turning when I fall ill, and for Bertie Ahern to delare a national day of mourning. Don't worry though, I'm not going to be dramatic. No, I'll bravely endure the onslaught of the army of viral terrorists trying to crush my spirit in a 9-11 torrent of germs. I'll be silent and bravely withhold myself against the emaciating and and mildly uncomfortable phlegmatic cloud that surrounds me. I may stumble and fall, faint in a heroic heap, and with my last dying breath whimper the words " Let it never be said that Flash grumbled when he as sick," but you will never hear me utter a single hyperbolic word that defines men as big over-the-top moans. For, as I said, I'm not dramatic.

But you know what sucks about being sick? Apart from it hampering the normal hi-jinks of me as an intrepid Indiana Jones-type adventurer (how many holy grails can i uncover if I keep coughing my guts up, disturbing thousands of years of dust? How can I deftly replace ancient security systems with counterweights if I have to wipe me nose on me sleeve?) I was left in a house with no t.v. That's right. Tellyless when sick is a jip. I tried to pick up a book and take the opporunity to read some exciting medieval verse (man am I sexy) but my eyes puffed up like an arsehole in a windtunnel. My saving grace on Wednesday was that my flatmate Jax was also sick, so we made use of our limited resources and played hide-and-seek. I thoroughly kicked her ass, even when I hid in one of the bedrooms in the corner in the dark with a laundry basket over my head. Christ do we need a t.v...

When I went back to Dublin i saw a glistening gogglebox in the corner churning out colours at me, murmuring what I imagined to be pleasant "welcome-home" noises, but it was probably Ryan Tubridy giving a generic smarmy hello. It was fitting that when I flitted on the T.V for the first time in an age, I saw a newly re-vamped Doctor Who there, as it was Peter Davidson's daleks that were my earliest T.V memory. I remember they terrified me, and I failed to see the logistic problem of organising an invasion and not being able to ascend a flight of stairs. Even an aggressive speed-bump would make the most fearsome dalek thing twice. I realised with horror, that now would be the perfect time - in our wheelchair accessible society, we are screwed if the Daleks tried to invade us. Can't make it up the steps of the Houses of Parliament? No problem for the modern dalek, there are plenty of wheelchair ramps available. Plus they get more convenient parking than us. Still, if there is a fire in a building, they're fecked and will burn with all the other wheelchair users.
With all these strange thoughts running through my head, i realised that it was probably a good thing that I don't have a t.v after all, and I switched it off, and moaned about my illness for a while.

BOOTY-FALL

The day after St. Patricks day is like the years during a nuclear winter. There's a dirty stillness in the air, and all about there is the pugency of death. Mutated sub-humans cling to the shadows, and peer out into the piercing sun with black resentful eyes. Only cockroaches have survived it; well cockroaches and those still pissed from the night before. I regarded the sullen yellow-faced post-revellers as I walked down Cork's Summerhil road. They all may as well have "regret" tatooed to the foreheads; "regret" but in smaller print beneath: "but sure wait til I meet the boys down the pub tonight and tell them all about the hi-jinks I was up to, sure wasn't only hillarious, especially that thing I did with the traffic cone. I may regret it now but I'll be feckin a legend later." Luckily most Corkmen's foreheads are large enough to contain this information. With complete glossary and explanatory notes. I should know, they're me kin.

Today though, I'm not suffering as this Patrick's day wasn't quite the embarassing spectacle my "Wept for St. Paddio" (See March 2004) was last year. I left the anonymous multi-national corporation (ie. work) at 10:30, and tried desperately to play catch up, to limited success. I found Donz on her lonesome in The Oval, doing some Claresque sleep-dancing but still somehow managed to stay more or less veritical for most of the night. I do say almost, because she did perform a graceful backwards dive into a crowd of burley men, who helped her to verticality with a courteous push. The whole effect was impressive and looked suspiciously pre-staged, I'm sure I've seen the same effect in Moulin Rouge. Nevertheless, fair play to her she saw out the full night in The Works, despite the fact that she seemed to be oblivious to everything except how much she hated the venue she was in.

When we finally climbed Summerhill and Ballyhooley Rds - two roads in cork that exhibit the x-files-worthy phenonenon of becoming steadily steeper as the the night progresses - I fell into bed... while Donz just fell. They should have ads on the telly giving stark warning about the dangers of removing your boots under the influence, something along the lines of having some fun-loving youth coming home from the pub, and in a carefree manner trying to flick off his shoe at the heel with the point of his other shoe, and then falling out a window and falling on top of a small child. That would get the message across.

Now, I sit here, in the anonymous multi-national corporation, shielded form the nuclear winter with layers of corregated steel and rays of artificial yellow light. There are morlocks all about me, all suffering from post-traumatic stress. And judging from the pained hobbling, there was a lot of unshoeing-related disasters to... erm... boot.

BOOZED AND CONFUSED

When I met Clara again last weekend, she had already had a full day. That is to say she had got up, gone to the Jameson Distillery, had got drunk, had slept, and had a hangover. Bleary-eyed and confused, she looked vaguely bewildered in the hostel reception, and I saw a shadow of tired annoyance fall across her face, as I wasn't in the first direction she faced. That's it, just ninety degrees to your left, more, more, there I am! now that wasn't so hard was it? She sat down in a swoon after that monumental effort of finding me in a room in which a flea would get Deep Vein Thrombosis. Then Kim, another delightful Canadian (yes, another bloody one!) and an Aussie (yes, another one) - who looked a little bit too much like Joe Mangel from Neighbours for my liking - went out for a few beers. Well I went out for a few beers; since they had all been fecked courtesy of Jameson's, I went to the bar in Bruxelles and requested, with the highest level of mortification, "A pint of Carlsberg and three waters please," feeling the eyes of the big smelly butch goths drilling me with contempt. And when big smelly butch goths look down their noses at you, you know you've sunk to a new low.

So I let them go home to bed, and I caught up with Crapman in the Longstone, along with the Crapmum and Diarmuid. Having arrived without Clara, Crapman arms-foldingly and eyebrow-raisedly refused to believe that she existed. We then got very sozzled, and the conversation got very blue; I would say that it was frightfully inappropriate in the presence of the Crapmum, but she was spouting the worst of it.

Sunday saw my first ever trip on the LUAS! How very exciting for me. I even got to see someone being busted for not paying their fare. I welcomed the drama since I don't have a telly at the moment, it kicked The Bill's arse. As I pulled up towards Collins Barracks I saw two Canadians waving frantically at me; I reluctantly left my live version of CSI:Dublin and joined them for a wee walk through the Phoenix Park. Enjoying the intermittent non-commital Irish sunshine, we strolled towards and sat by the Wellington monument, or as Clara called it the "phallic monument". If this is her idea of phallic, I'm in for some stiff (ahem!) competition.

Now, Lent is doing me nut. I had resolved to give up Coke (that's the drink) for the 40 days, and I half-arsedly considered extending that to all fizzy drinks (excepting beer, naturally). I made the mistake of mentioning this to Clara, who now won't let me drink anything fizzy, not for any moral reaon you understand, just to confound me. "You're breaking your bond with God!" she cries in earnest whenever I reach for anything bubbly, ignoring completely the fact that she's an atheist. So, after some merry boozing in The Brazen head, I had to settle for a tacky St. Patrick's milkshake in McDonalds. I hope God is reading this. What am I saying? - He sees all and reads all.
Man, he must HATE the internet.

"Do you SLAG me on the internet?" I just remembered Clara asking me politely not to defame her character on the Flog.
Oops.

AUSSIFIED PART 2

I left the tropical climes of the Rebel County to grapple with the Arctic Circle that lies within the M50. Dublin has suddenly become so frigid that you can't lick your lips for fear of them fusing together. Turning onto that wind tunnel that is O'Connell street, I felt my groin recoil in terror, and attempt to ingest itself within my body. Not only that, but I felt my nippular area elongate ansd stick out suggestively. In other words, Dublin weather turned me into a woman.
I wormed my way through the throngs of other cold-induced recent post-op transexuals to collect Clara from the Avalon house. We cheekily started having a vodka-flavoured diet cokes in the hostel foyer, and then - like a pair of knackers - took out innocent-looking beverages down towards the Mezz in Temple Bar. Waiting outside to finish our illicit cocktails, a homeless man approached us.
"Sorry mate" I said, giving him a sympathetic fob-off, "we're back-packers (a half-truth), ye know, we haven't a penny ourselves..."
It was then that Clara exclaimed in in loud and proud voice:
"Aw man, I gotta go to the bank!!"
I half expected her to continue with: "... thank you mr. homeless man for reminding me of all my worldly riches, I'm off now to spend all my money on booze! Sucka!"

So began our "Goodbye Kerry" weekend. Sniffety sniff, the expletive-spouting Aussie was departing Cork much to our collective despair. I had missed out on sharing the coach ride up with them, in which I gather there was an incident with one of our companions (who shall be very grateful if she remains nameless), a Pringles box and a full bladder. No more needs to be said there I think.
After The Mezz, we took ourselves onto Whelan's then, in which another onslaught of bevvies were consumed. Clara was so untidy towards the end she very admirably achieved the skill of dancing and sleeping at the same time, a strange sleepwalking boogie Intersparsed with a trip to the loo every five minutes or so. I should've just given her a Pringles box and been done with it.

To the Turk's Head the next night, for more of the same shenanigans, merriment tinged with a slight air of sadness, knowing that very shortly Kezza would be flying away. The fact that we ended in the night in that fine establishment Zaytoons was more than fitting. It has been the rounder of so many good nights.

The next morning, my Dad drove me into the airport. Half panicked, I said "Her flight leaves in half-an-hour", to which he responded that there was a lot of building going on there, and wasn't that a grand garden there, and they've dug a ditch there all along, and wasn't the traffic heavy for this time on a Sunday, and sure would you look at that, a big tree lying across the road well I'll have to go around the long way I s'pose. I responded to his carefully slow Sunday driving with quiet (very quiet) gratitude. He did finally say, "sure, it'd be a pity if you missed her all the same"
No shit Dad.
But all was well, we watched her wiggada wiggida (some sort of traditional Aussie dance) through departutes, moaned and shed some tears.
"F*ck off ya c*nt" I said, and I could see that she was touched.

When the lads all went back down to Cork, I took Clara to see the book of Kells.
"How old is it in relation to the pyramids?" she said, as all historical events must be referenced with the age of the pyramids for Clara. Which is strange, considering she doesn't actually know the age of the pyramids. She read a display which stated: "Peacocks were associated with Christ and the Resurrection, as it was believed that Peacock flesh did not decompose."
"Man," she said, "they musta been pretty dumb, I mean if I saw a dead peacock, I'd say 'hey look, it's decomposing'."
She had a point I guess, but thank God she was never in any of my medieval tutorials, I would've been stumped!
She found the Book of Kells pretty underwhelming actually; mind you they did have the book turned onto one of the few pages of the book without a single illustration. That's Trinity for you. F*ckin c*nts.

I dropped her home then, and feeling a bit peckish, I bought myself a small packet of pringles.
For some reason, they didn't have the same appeal they used to. I suddenly imagined I smelled piss, but that just might have been O'Connell street.

A WEE STORY

A bloke has spent five years travelling all around the world making a documentary on native dances. At the end of this time, he has every single native dance of every indigenous culture in the world on video. He winds up in Australia, in Alice Springs, so he pops into a pub for a well-earned pint of the local "amber nectar". He gets talking to one of the local Aborigines and tells him about his project.

The Aborigine asks the bloke what he thought of the "Butcher Dance."

The bloke's a bit confused and says, "Butcher Dance? What's that?"

"What? You no see Butcher Dance?"

"No, I've never heard of it."

"Oh mate. You crazy. How you say you film every native dance if you no see Butcher Dance?"

"Umm. I got a Corroborree on film just the other week. Is that what you mean?"

"No no, not Corroborree. Butcher Dance much more important than Corroborree."

"Oh, well how can I see this Butcher Dance then?"

"Mate, Butcher Dance right out bush. Many days travel to go see Butcher Dance."

"Look, I've been everywhere from the forests of the Amazon to deepest darkest Africa, to the frozen wastes of the Arctic filming these dances. Nothing will prevent me from recording this one last dance."

"OK mate. You drive north along highway towards Darwin. After you drive 197 miles, you see dirt track veer off to left. Follow dirt track for 126 miles till you see big huge dead gum tree - biggest tree you ever see. Here you gotta leave the car, because much too rough for driving. You strike out due west into setting sun. You walk three days 'til you hit creek. You follow this creek to Northwest. After two days you find where creek flows out of rocky mountains. Much too difficult to cross mountains here though. You now head south for half day 'til you see pass through mountains. Pass very difficult and very dangerous. Take two, maybe three days to get through rocky pass. When through, head northwest for four days till reach big huge rock - 20 feet high and shaped like man's head. From rock, walk due west for two days and you find village. Here you see Butcher Dance."

So the guy grabs his camera crew and equipment and heads out. After a couple of hours he finds the dirt track. It's is in a shocking state and he's forced to crawl along at a snail's pace and so he doesn't reach the tree until dusk and he's forced to set up camp for the night.

He sets out bright and early the following morning. His spirits are high and he's excited about the prospect of capturing on film this mysterious dance which he had never heard mention of before.

True to the directions he has been given, he reaches the creek after three days and follows it for another two until they reach the rocky mountains. The merciless sun is starting to take its toll by this time and his spirits are starting to flag, but wearily he trudges on until he finds the pass through the hills - nothing will prevent him from completing his life's dream.

The mountains prove to be every bit as treacherous as their guide said and at times they almost despair of getting their bulky equipment through. But after three and a half days of back breaking effort they finally force their way clear and continue their long trek.

When they reach the huge rock, four days later, their water is running low and their feet are covered with blisters. Yet they steel themselves and head out on the last leg of their journey. Two days later they virtually stagger into the village, where the natives feed them and give them fresh water. They begin to feel like new men.

Once he's recovered enough, the bloke goes before the village chief and tells him that he has come to film their Butcher Dance.

"Oh mate. Very bad you come today. Butcher Dance last night. You too late. You miss dance."

"Well, when do you hold the next dance?"

"Not till next year."

"Well, I've come all this way. Couldn't you just hold an extra dance for me, tonight?"

"No, no, no! Butcher Dance very holy. Only hold once a year. If hold more, gods get very angry and destroy village! You want see Butcher Dance you come back next year."

The guy is devastated, but he has no other option but to head back to civilisation and back home.

The following year, he heads back to Australia and, determined not to miss out again, sets out a week earlier than last time. He is quite willing to spend a week in the village before the dance is performed in order to ensure he is present to witness it. However, right from the start things go wrong.

Heavy rains have turned the dirt track to mud and the car gets bogged every few miles, finally forcing them to abandon their vehicles and slog through the mud on foot almost half the distance to the tree. They reach the creek and the mountains without any further hitch, but halfway through the ascent of the mountain they are struck by a fierce storm that rages for several days, during which they are forced to cling forlornly to the mountainside until it subsides. It'd be sheer suicide to attempt to scale the treacherous paths in the face of such savage elements.

Then, before they have travelled a mile out from the mountains, one of the crew sprains his ankle really badly, which slows down the rest of their journey enormously, to the rock and then the village.

Eventually, having lost all sense of how long they have been travelling, they stagger into the village at about 12:00 noon.

"The Butcher Dance!" gasps the bloke. "Please don't tell me I'm too late!"

The chief recognises him and says: "No, white fella. Butcher Dance performed tonight. You come just in time."

Relieved beyond measure, the crew spends the rest of the afternoon setting up their equipment - preparing to capture the night's ritual on celluloid as dusk falls, the natives start to cover there bodies in white paint and adorn themselves in all manner of bird's feathers and animal skins. Once darkness has settled fully over the land, the natives form a circle around a huge roaring fire.

A deathly hush descends over performers and spectators alike, as a wizened old figure with elaborate swirling designs covering his entire body enters the circle and begins to chant. Some sort of witch doctor or medicine man, figures the bloke, and he whispers to the chief: "What's he doing?"

"Hush," whispers the chief. "You first white man ever to see most sacred of our rituals. Must remain silent. Holy man, he asks that the spirits of the dream world watch as we demonstrate our devotion to them through our dance and, if they like our dancing, will they be so gracious as to watch over us and protect us for another year."

The chanting of the Holy man reaches a stunning crescendo before he moves himself from the circle. From somewhere the rhythmic pounding of drums booms out across the land and the natives begin to sway to the stirring rhythm.

The bloke is becoming caught up in the fervour of the moment himself. This is it. He now realises beyond all doubt that his wait has not been in vain. He is about to witness the ultimate performance of rhythm and movement ever conceived by mankind.

The chief strides to his position in the circle and, in a big booming voice, starts to sing...

"You butch yer right arm in. You butch yer right arm out. You butch yer right arm in and you shake it all about..."

Wandering down the Western Road in Cork the other day I came across this advert taped to a bus shelter. I took a snap on my phone (hence poor quality) It says:
"Male, 32 yrs, Handsome. educated, Third Level: Seeks ANY female for marriage. The wife will receive regular payments and will still enjoy her single life.Text or phone: 0871253643"

Any takers?

AUSSIFIED: PART ONE

I was back crime-fighting with Crapman this weekend, if by crimefighting you mean drinking and watching episodes of "Porridge". Crapman Jr. (the little bro) will be heading off to Australia soon so we had a sesh in Zanzibar to send him on his merry way. Crapman sent me a text saying: "Hey mate. We're upstairs in that pub whose name isn't in predictive text so I'm not going to bother." Why he bothered with his lengthy explanation of why he wasn't going to bother is a mystery. Actually, thinking about it, I strangely understand. I'm convinced that all people who don't use predictive text all go to Wagamammas for dinner as it's the most non-predictive friendly venue in the whole of Christendom and beyond. In fact, I went there the folowing night with Sarah to alleviate my predictive stress.
Anyway, back to that predictive unfriendly place. We met a guy there - Leo - that we went to Playschool with, and we reminisced...
"I remember our Playschool teacher," said Leo
"I remember I called her 'Mum'" said Crapman.
"I remember being given a three-piece jigsaw and having trouble with it, " said I.
(pause)
"Yeah I remember you being about that thick" said Crapman.

That wasn't the only person I was reminiscing with... In Zanzibar I met Zeno, a lovely wee Spaniard that's good mates with Johnny Ramos (A Spot of Weeding, Nov 2004). Zeno is about as Spanish as they come, but her perrenial trips to Wexford has graced her with spice of South-East Irish drawl. So just when you do the typical English-speaker thing of carefully pronouncing all your phrasing to avoid interpretive confusion, she'll put your in your place be calling you, " Ye smelly tinker ye!" We hardly recognised each other - since our last encounter, she had ameliorated her ravishing glow, and I've probably deteriorated like a wet tissue that only have ragged slivers of snot holding it togther.

In "O Canada" (about two Flogs ago) I wrote about how Canadian culture seemed to be seeping into my life. While that's still going on (I'm supposed to be meeting three Canadian girls on Thursday night - giggedy giggedy!) but I find myself simulaneously "Aussified", being surrounded by Australians. A curiously apt term, as I tend to spend most of my time with them just as that: Ossified. And f**k can they swear! When I came back to the Big Schmoke, Crapman - hardly a prude by any standards - commented on the frequency of my colourful adjectives, and blamed it on a roughshod munster lifestyle. It was outside the Bank of Ireland by Trinity, waiting to cross in the pissing rain, some bastard in a Beemer displacing a large puddle all over yours truly, that the truth behind my linguistic colour was revealed.
For it was then that the Australian in me came out. My first reaction was to cry out "F*CKIN' C*NTS!" and I found I did it with a broad Aussie accent. I can point the finger of blame firmly at Kez (look at PICTURES opposite, first from the right) as the aforemantioned exclaimation is her personal mantra. Honestly, never trust a woman who's phone says "f*ckers" for some reason everytime she turns it on.
Aussie's are great though, especially when they are waitresses - as Kez and Jacqui are. I love the way when they say "Do you want a water with that?" It sounds exactly like a fart in the bath.

Tomorrow is Australia day. Close your ears kiddies.