Fashion Faux Pah

Here’s a few things I just don’t understand:

Double-breasted short-sleeved jackets. DB’s look rubbish if they aren’t buttoned up. But if I need to button my jacket, chances are I’ll be needing long sleeves too.

Covered heels. I’ve covered this. A pet hate. Unless you glide around on carpet all day. And hover to and from the house/ car.

Leggings with stirrups. I for one am chuffed as nuts at the resurgence of leggings, but jamming the ends of them into shoes obscures the the shapeliest part of a ladies leg, the curve of the calf and the nipped waist of the knee. Leggings with stirrups = V-shaped lycra sausages. Why do that to yourself?

Elastic waisted denim jeans. Yes I’m looking at you River Island. Catch yourself on.

“No”

Passage

In my head I’ve been tremendously angry at a lot of people today. It all started when I opened the fridge and there was no food. This meant I could see it needed a rub. Next thing I’m on my knees. I’ve exited the fridge and turned left heading for the sink along the skirting bleaching everything on route. I got angry at so and so when the glass smashed. Hasselhoff. I got really mad about the other one when I came back without the book after three trips to fetch it. Raging when I realised the time. Livid at such and such when the plug got wedged in the sink. By the end of the afternoon I wanted to put everyone I was angry at in a big pile and set fire to them. All those people implicated in domestic crimes of frustration against me. 

Found a box under the stairs that I knew fine rightly was there. I never did get to the bottom of it at the time. A quick prod through the tissue paper had revealed a camera, an article by a writer we used to read aloud to each other, save excitedly and read twice if it was a good one. Still in there, folded in half at the top. I’d pulled out a hand-written CD and threw it instantly at my feet. Gasped even. Like a hammy actress in a bad play who finds a dead mouse in her handbag. Stuffed the unwarranted box with it’s unwanted contents to the back of the cupboard six months ago. I keep having to look under it for things. I ought to throw it out. Still. You know you’re out the other side of something when you dont care what’s been carefully put on a CD for you.

Mr Tumnus brings me turkish delight

Play me: Bon Iver Skinny Love

Clip clop Mr Tumnus hoofs across my kitchen and the tears make icing sugar tracks on our pink cheeks.

I smile in front of the shed this morning with Bon Iver in my ears. A year ago today in front of the shed on a sunny morning urgently trying to get to the bottom of a bottle of wine. Because it looked like a good place to be after a night conducted on the kitchen floor. Before that a shocking phonecall. My world implodes in a maelstrom of betrayal, abject confusion. Pain. My brother and my other brothers wife turn up later a family rally-round. Family Malmbulance. And I’m on the ‘phone fielding the final ‘rattle call upstairs. I stare, unlikely pair at my door on an unlucky spring night. He waters the garden. She makes decisions that are beyond me. Such as which shoe goes with what shoe, they make me take a jacket. On the way they get me a chip and a bottle of beer. Our own little ten minute road movie. Between us we construct a walk on the tow path, they lift one foot and place it in front of the other for me. They build sentences to save me trying.  Little chatter for laughter ‘oh look, cows’ hahahaha Look At The Funny Cows they point with grim determination to stop me falling into the Lagan. I put myself in front of a tree and made them take my photograph. So I won’t forget what betrayal looks like.

A year in this garden of mine and I smile. The onions are coming through. I dont need 42 onions I tell my Father. Make soup. He says. An extraordinary year. Early summer I find my estranged friend in a park, punishing myself with fresh pain running. Later I sit in a bath the saddest girl to ever hold a martini. Wretchedly missing the two people I care about too much. I can’t fix The Terrible Betrayal but I can fix This, I decide. By next spring Mr Tumnus is clip-clopping around my kitchen with her box of Turkish Delight and the tears are rolling down our cheeks with laughter. Sometimes you have to completely demolish something to rebuild it stronger. Or sometimes you just need to be around.

This is the land of Narnia, where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea.

(Mr Tumnus. Who didnt have any Turkish Delight at all it transpires. It was thon Queen that tempted the boy)

Wee rabin

Bird hops about then throws itself over the fence into next doors. “Dezzie, Dezzie, wee rabin” says her. That’s nice, I think, minding my own lettuce. Sometimes it’s not all god’s own garden over the way though. Every few weeks The Racket will go off and go on for three or four days. Vile things are flung, things that people should never say to each other. Relentless, The Racket. Doesnt let up. Doors smash, whore’s are named, desperate things are vowed to. I want to go around and knock their front door and remind them that one day we’ll all be dead. But sure what would be the point whilst they’re locked in the mortal combat of a marriage. They do the garden together on the Sundays that arent inclement, he works nights there’s never been any children. She doesn’t drive. They giggle away he finds her funny. I like that bit. Big man guffaws. She chuckles with satisfaction and pretends not to know her own wit. Rackets to Rabins. The things people do to each other.

Tena Pants & Tampax Rock

I have to tell you, I don’t watch television much. Not keen. Why would I do that it’s rubbish. And there’s only room for so many little pebbles in the big pebble jar, regardless of what the pebble parable tells us. Plus contrary to what the world thinks, us singlesomethings do not luxuriate in 56 hour days and 9 day weeks with boundless acres of ‘me time’ to romp around in. Believe me, running a business, managing a house and trying to raise two blogs just about covers whatever ‘me’ there might be in ‘time’.

I like the odd info-mentry, there’s merit in one or two dramas, and I’m not adverse  to rubber-necking at the lives of the celebrity unfortunates who earn themselves a late night documentary on More 4 through some schism with reality. Who can forget the horrible fascination that was ‘Half Ton Son’? Seriously, I nearly went into the back of the guy in front gawping at that one. However if I wanted to watch people being mean to each other I’d go back to the corporate environment, so The Apprentice and Britains Got Desperate is out of the question. The odd time though, I’ll flop in and flip on the computer (yes, I dont even own a 42 inch plasma television) and be lulled into a false sense of stupidity by some frippery like Sex In The City. And I’ll just stare at it, in a contented dopamine haze, engaging no other senses than the ones that deal with the mystery of shiny hair and the impracticalities of the covered heel in an urban environment. I try not to extract homilies from American television series (though I feel sure there was a deep and pertinent message in every episode of Cheers) but the other week I was struck by Carrie Bradshaws latest singlesomething rant at world. Married people, she wailed, we celebrate their engaements,, their weddings, anniversaries, pregnancies, births christenings kids birthdays communions bar mitzvahs etc etc (I’m extrapolating) what is ever celebrated in the singletons life? Should Hallmark get onto it? I think not.

Anyway, that wasnt actually the point de post ce jour. Point was, end of episode, cut to ads. And just when I’m in a nice funky new york bubble of frothy de la renta frocks and rent controled loft apartments (n’importante that I’m a little vague about exactly what that means)

“Ladies! In your thirties? Still want to enjoy life? You Need TENA PANTS!”

W.T.F?? Next ad: Men! In your forties? Are you suffering from erectile dysfunction?

WHAT? WHEN? HOW? WHEN DID WE ENTER THIS WORLD?? Is that it then? The whole world now thinks ‘thirty-something female’ then immediately thinks ‘Tena Pants’ by association. As if it’s not hard enough to be taken seriously around here. I’M NOT EVEN SURE WHAT THEY ARE FOR. SO NEED.TO.KNOW.BASIS.THANK-YOU. Tell me how exactly Tena Pants and Erectile Dysfunction ‘dove-tails neatly’ with Bradshaws pink n lime lacy bits drying over the shower curtain rail? I mean really. It’s nearly as bad as those ads for the ‘gender specific products’ which I am vehemently opposed to. All scuba diving and Tampax Rock soundtracks (you know who you are). I’m telling you, it’s only a matter of time before they permit them to use red ink instead of that blue listerine. And that’ll be it people. All barriers will be down.

I was trying to describe you to someone

And when I tried again today it came out completely different

Funny the way that happens

Meat On A Stick

I think I’m in love. It’s like…a souped-up Camille Paglia on speed and a carafe of cheap Chianti

http://maxicane.com/

You women don’t want orgasms anyway, they’re terrible things.  I knew a woman who claimed to have an orgasm once and she died of telling a lie.  She just died.  Stopped living.  Probably with the shame of trying to convince the world of her crazy tales.

Don’t worry about it.  Orgasms are like opinions, women can’t have either.

Peace out.

The Culotted Twitterer

Finished Leadbeater, still mulling…

So. Dipping toes in tricky territory and popping heads above parlous parapets now. What with all this twittering bleeting and blog-trotting, foisting opinions on Fastfude…..most chuffed to be ‘Desked‘ – but why? Leadbeater does a leadbetter job than I could on analysing this instinct to just spew observation and dilutions thereof into cybersphere. It’s a heady cocktail, the urge to scribble, the need to connect, stir in a soupçon of information junkie, need-to-know nosey-beak and gadget geek, factor in the desire for feedback and peer-applause, and you’ve got your serial blogger right there. Perhaps it taps into the diarist, the documentarian, the habitual observationalist in a certain profile. You know the type, 200 years ago we’d have been cataloguing butterflies in big culottes. Hey whats the bets ‘culottes’ is a hot tag?

I tweet therefore I am, I blog therefore I’m heard. Albeit by the two people a day who bizarrely google ‘mens pointy shoes’. I’m not kidding, if you want to direct traffic to anywhere, I recommend liberally peppering the text with ‘free porn’ and ‘mens pointy shoes’. (Note to self: Crash out quick bloggette tagged ‘free porn’)

There is a perversity in the Norn Iron psyche that delights in knocking the block off any bap foolish enough to poke itself above the parapet…notwithstanding I attempted a considered and (I thought) informative piece on Fastfude on the merits of Twitter. The indie-kids seemed a little vague on it’s potential, and I was possibly a little piqued at being categorised by a common noun like ‘twats’ (© my-angel-rocks) However, for my efforts, I earned myself this from Shane In Craigavon:

“I can tell you that you are some slut character from some 20s buke who was hangin round with a jock, but got mowed down by the metaphorical ‘American Dream’, or somethin bulshitty like that…”

Have to be impressed he identified the obscure character from the ‘Gatsby whose moniker I blether under, but still. Decided not to encourage him and let it slide. Poor lad clearly has his own problems, he lives in Craigavon for starters, and is probably stressed out by his mocks. But what I really should have posted was “now now charmer, this is not the forum to be schmoozing the ladies. Theres dedicated sites for that sort of thing you know”

or “Listen Pal, if you knew me you’d get the symmetry ok?”

I really have been giving this all a lot of thought. It started with the business networking, then there was Leadbeater, then the blog and then along came twitter. -Next thing I’m at Open Coffee Lisburn and in danders alaninbelfast. It was most fascinating, to meet in the flesh what I suspect I had largely regarded as an abstract electronic concept. As I said at the time, I felt like I had stepped through the wardrobe and was gazing at Narnia (I know I know, me and five blokes having a coffee in Lisburn, I know. But it was early and I had a bit of a hangover so things had a hyper-real aspect that morning)

Anyway, here’s what I posted on Fastfude. Not sure who I convinced, Shane In Craigavon hasnt been too vocal it has to be said.

Usually reluctant to stick my head over the parapet, particularly on a forum like ‘fude as there is something slightly perverse in the local psyche which delights in knocking it off. But regardless, here’s a considered shot across the bow of the Twitter-maligners. It may well be this years facebook which was last years friends reunited. And chances are we wont be twittering in ten years time, but if we’re not, we’ll be doing something else. The collective We-Think, (© Charles Leadbeater) the cumulative power of the What I Know Is, is here to stay and it’s the way of the future. Be it the pithy distilled sound bites of Twitters 140 characters, or something else entirely, this form of localised and global real time communication has taken networking, marketing, and the immediate dissemination of information to unprecedented levels. Dip into Charles Leadbeater and see what he has to say on the subject. Check out his anecdote about the Asian kid doing Pachelbels Canon in D on his electric guitar in his bedroom. 58 million hits. THAT’S the power of the übernet. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a band, a fan, geek, marketeer, or promoter, Twitter is one of the most powerful tools on the internet right now to either a] get a message out there to a highly targeted audience, or b] efficiently monitor real time events, articles, releases, news and pertinent commentary.

Twitter is an extraordinary information aggregator, and its real power lies in that you choose what to be fed. Single publications, newspapers, music rags, even bespoke sites such as this, physically cannot transmit enough information of enough range. Invariably they have to pitch to the common denominator of the masses to maintain traffic. I use Twitter to cherry-pick the days news and commentary. And from feeds as diverse as The Guardian, The Onion, Belfast Telegraph, New Humanist, local wags like Slugger O’Toole. I slake my thirst for band news with NME, Kerrang, Rock Sound and other more obscure commentators. More and more bands are signing up, I’m hearing first about release dates, local gigs and tours. These are all click-throughs, if I fancy the tag-line I’ll follow the link. I could have fifty RSS feeds in my mail box, but I’d never get around to checking them daily. Instead I browse my Twitter homepage and choose what to pursue. I’ve bought 3 albums this weekend from excellent bands I’ve never heard of, been to two extraordinary lectures recently that I otherwise would not have been alerted to, and just caught a local gig that I’d have cried if i’d missed . I spend a not inconsiderable sum on formalised business networking in Northern Ireland, yet suddenly, through Twitter I find myself at Open Coffee Lisburn building very interesting relationships with much more like minded people with much more relevant interests. Nobody gives a flying Veda what I just had for breakfast, but I’m not telling them. Nor am I interested in what Stephen Fry is up to, so I’m not following him. But what I do put out there and who I elect to follow flags up my interests, crawlers pick this up and alert me to their presence and if I’m interested, I follow them. [i]Highly effective, highly targeted free marketing that puts the marketee in control.[/i] For the record, there’s a few of you muso types out there who’d do well to Twitter up-coming gigs, I’d have you on feed and it would save me trawling dozens of sites weekly to see what you’re up to.. My Twitter ID is MyrtleWilson, but it’s not about what I’m telling you, it’s about what You can tell Me.

Suck it n see…

We-Think about oclisburn

Not one to ordinarily overcook the folly of dreams, I do choose to interpret bagel-gate as evidence that my sub-conscience was rattled to a degree by my Friday morning foray at oclisburn. And I don’t think I’m overdramatising things either. Up to that point even my oldest friend, keeper of my darkest secrets, was blithely unaware of MyrtleWilson, Tucker McBoots, Get Her, or any of their cyber-ramblings. Yet suddenly I’m handing out my handle to a table of strangers and at once my internet presence takes on a whole new set of implications. What was a quiet personal stroll down the information superhighway has now become a very real and public journey, with as yet undetermined destination. And yes, yes, all we travelers know, armchair and otherwise, the journey is the destination. But why embark?

This morning I picked up Charles Leadbeaters ‘We-Think’ again and continued where I’d left off. I’d embraced it with gusto after attending his excellent lecture at the Art College, but circumstances overtook me and it was abandoned on the mantle-piece for a month. However now I find it more pertinent than ever. If I need to understand what inspired me to get in my car and drive to Lisburn at 7am, to sit in a cafe and wait for I-didnt-know-how-many-people, who were going to talk about I-didn’t-know-what, then Leadbeater seems as good a place as any to start. Will revert.

Careful what you Twitter

So. Via twitter, so and so @MyrtleWilson ‘you do know that four shopping trolleys of bagels have fallen on the corner of your house?’ So I go outside and have a look, and sure enough, four shopping trolleys of bagels have indeed delivered themselves from the heavens, crashing down onto the corner of my house. Perhaps mildly more surprising again, these bagels have been fashioned in the shape of fat doughy numbers. Theres a number 6 bagel, theres a 3, a 2, an 8, and they’re everywhere. Not to mention the structural damage from said trolleys of course. In the addled passage from sleep to wakening in a dappled sunlit room this seemed a not outlandish if irksome situation. However lucidity threatens, and my mind starts to query it all, but not to ponder why this happened, ‘where did they come from?’ these bageled trolleys from the sky, but rather to muse on the influence of twitter on all this. That’s when it did start to seem confusing and unreasonable. It hardly seemed fair that just because someone has told me something has happened on twitter, it then becomes a fact, and therefore has occurred. If it hadnt been twittered at me, I concluded, I wouldnt be in this mess. Thats it, I decided, the internet, and our twitterings and bloggings-on dont just mirror our reality, they parallel our reality, and if the lines cross over, they actively become it. Very pleased, if somewhat concerned with the implications of this deduction I went back to sleep again. In the warm light of morning proper the theory may need a little reworking, but I think I’ve got the bones of it nailed anyway. Pleased to report not a trolley or bagel in sight.

Cashier No.9 @ Black Box

More ‘Nash n Young than mosh-pit or mash-up, Danny Todd slim-slo-slides around the stage like he’s feeling it and loving it not just delivering it. And it doesnt come on a plate either, it’s a cleverly constructed rollercoaster that demands you pay attention. A slippy Beatles lick collides with a rolling midwest highway you’ve never driven, a bad relationship you never had and a druggy mesmeric trip you never took. And the whole things littered with indie cajun bluegrass glockenspiel cowbell cowboy percussion and it’s a sexy hectic electric ride.

This is no electric picnic, this is sassy savvy grown-up music that knows what it wants and won’t stop till you Get It. This is a band that listens to music. This is a band that knows about words and how to wrap a tasty lyric around a raucous tune. Songs that have plot. Drumming fueled by diesel, guitars that know what the hell they are up to, and balladerring head and shoulders above the parapet.

The endless references and innuendo have you racking your brain and the electric crescendo wrecks your bap. Analogue has a nasty punch up with digital and I can’t decide who’s coming out on top. I’m put in mind of ASIWYFA, they’re registering on the same spectrum, not least by dint of being so bloody good and so damn clever. ASIWYFA are just on the more industrial end of things: deserted power station to Cashiers prairie wastelands.

Driving home I had Wintersleep on and for a minute I got the two mixed up. It’s that same multi-layered multi-referencing swaggering jaunt bristling with steel that just makes you want to knock on peoples doors and tell them about it. ‘Get out of yer house come out here on the street and listen to this for CHRIST Sake’

Next up, And So I Watch You From Afar at Mandela on 4th unless something else presents itself beforehand. I’m so excited about THAT I might burst into tears with anticipation.

Do You Remember The First Time

So. Those Cashier No.9 boys just make everything tingle. Got myself onto the barrier more or less and hunkered in for the haul. The ‘Hall Haul. It was a long stand, but worth it. You know, big up to all who pulled it off, and you can’t maintain a mass frenzy for that length of time over that many acts running the girth of the gamut with that many turnarounds. Glad to see Cashier getting so many honourable mentions in dispatches, they humbled the bigger acts with their understated ‘lectro swank n swagger. Makes me want to leap on a table and start a small civilised revolution. La Faro rip me up too. So did some decent spade-work on that irreversible tintanitus I’m cultivating by plonking myself front of stage left, but to get there had to wade through hoardes of sub-fourteen year olds (judging by the squeals n braces) and wodges of school uniforms wedged in plaggy bags. Good for them for getting on down there. Except for the bits when you could hear a pin drop – oh and the wee dufus behind me on his mobile bellowing ‘er yeah, I’m like, in the ulster hall man’ And the illusion (in my head) that I’m some some sort of edgy rock chick was replaced by the crashing realisation that I was actually projecting ’somebodies irritable mother’ (of which I am neither) by the nervous “Yeah man I have to like, go. Some womans telling me to shut up”

I don’t know jack but why did panama Kings and Ash sound so…off? And Ash looked like a band in two halves..

Wasn’t Michael Bradley JUST LOVELY

Like Hen’s teeth

So I have my ticket for ‘Do You Remember The First Time?’ at the Ulster Hall tonight. La di da, clever me. Even had spares to shift, which I prostituted on Fastfude for face value. Then fielded excited texts all night from hope-springs-eternals. One Wee Guy rocked up for two, and for a second I thought I was Santa Claus he was so pleased as he skipped off down the path before I changed my mind. Second Wee Guy came 30 miles to collect one for his girlfriend. He’s the singer with one of the bands, that’s how rare these things are. They gave me the inside scoop that Van der Man was closing with a Tings Tings number, then chuckled and paid me a fiver in 20p’s bless them. He was desperate to get his hands on one for his Mum, “but I’m not paying fifteen quid for one like”

On Spides

Just occurred to me to see what was out there on the subject. Noo I didnt ‘did you mean spider’ McGoogle. But joy, Wikipedia offers a very serious slant on the topic.

Spide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“A spide is a pejorative stereotype, in Northern Ireland, particularly in Belfast, of a person who has a particular dress code and attitude. Spides are often young unemployed male adults.^[1] The term predates “chav” (originally slang from south-east England, now widespread in the UK media) by at least a decade, and while the description is similar, it is not identical. The female version of Spide is “millie“.

There are many negative perceptions associated with the stereotype. These include allegations that they engage in anti-social behaviour. They are also often seen as boy racers, who loiter in car parks and public places playing music loudly from modified cars with up-rated hi-fi’s. Many wear Berghaus fleeces, fake jewellery, tracksuits (usually in light colours), white trainers and baseball caps (often fake Burberry.^[2]) “

I wondered about the etymology, in my youth I recall it referenced a certain ’spiderman-esque’ preference in tight trews, and lo! ‘pedia confirmed my suspiscions. So it must be true. Spides eh. Meh

Hang on, and what of ‘Millie’? Now this I recall in reference to someone who attended the Millbrook Lodge in fair Ballynahinch of the week-end. Let’s see…oh. There you go, stand corrected. I should have known that.

Noun

millie (plural millies)

1. (Northern Ireland, 19th Century, pejorative) a mill-worker, usually a young, working class woman working in the factories of Ireland’s linen industry.
2. (modern, pejorative) A working class, harsh-spoken woman, often unemployed (also mil-bag)^[1]
   

Now that’s what I call playlist

For those that give a rats, here’s how it goes in thirtleton singlesomething sunday. Yeah I know, tell it to the internet, tell it to the internet.

Woke up 0630hrs, had a diagonal think until 0730hrs and started on BBC 6. My love affair with ‘6 jocks is on the wane I fear, too much blokey babble, though he did spin ‘Oblivion’ before 8. So I’m waiting for William Crawley to kick in for some serious stuff and have a bit of a twitter, which I unashamedly duplicate on FaceBook. Fend off a few pre-breakfast emails from my scottish doppelgänger who’s pissed at turning Four. Oh. and just when I really should be thinking about getting my ass off to work I remember the last thing I did last night was fritter away an hour on UTube playing clips from Altmans most excellent ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ – so I fritter away another 30 minutes of my life I won’t get back doing the same again. Whoop Ti I Yi Yo… that John C Reilly..! (What the hell is that attraction all about??) But that flick just makes me SMILE. If Twitter has contributed anything to my life it’s The Onion. WHY WAS I NOT TOLD ABOUT THIS? Particularly enjoyed “The CIA realises it’s been using black highlighters all these years”.

“Why did it go on for this long, and this far?” said Goss in a press conference called shortly after the report’s release. “I’m as frustrated as anyone. You can’t read a single thing that’s been highlighted. Had I been there to advise [former CIA director] Allen Dulles, I would have suggested the traditional yellow color—or pink.”

Goss added: “There was probably some really, really important information in these documents.”

If you don’t ‘Onion, do it immediately.

Tear my ass away from my internet über life to go for a run, but get sidetracked by Everclear in my ear and can’t resist a bop around the kitchen to ‘AM Radio’ Nothing wrong with a bit of junk rock what.

Stop in the garage post-run for the trad breakfast of redbull and choc muffin. An elderly man hesitates at the door over a bunch of garage flowers, this makes me sad for a minute. Shouldnt do, there’s worse things to hesitate over at 10am on a sunday morning – like a ten glass bottle of cheap scotch for example. So wise up McBoots. On the way up the hill some spides in a wee spidey peanut car slow and screech a red hooter out the window at me. Which makes me laugh. It always dilutes your hooliganism when you’re sporting R plates. It sort of says you can’t legally do 70 on the motorway if you need to make a speedy getaway from the cops. Spides eh. Meh.

Run greatly enhanced by this months playlist on iPhone, which shuffled The Walkmen, Wintersleep and Wolf Parade (I’m all the W’s this week) with some vintage Pavement, Raconteurs, aforementioned Everclear, some Ida Maria, off-set with a soupçon of Joan As Policewoman and the live ‘Best of You’ (Foo Fighters) and the Velvets film edit of Sister Ray WHICH JUST MAKES ME FEEL GOOD ALL OVER

NOW THATS WHAT I CALL PLAYLIST