Dreadful Nonsense

New key word searches that my tracker worryingly tells me pointed people to my weblog:
- "short short hotpant pictures"
- "drugs for me to smoke"
- "Jade strips off on Big Brother"
- "free porn pictures without pop up windows"

The day before the Fringe is set to begin. The city is quickly filling up with comedians. An overview of the state of Edinburgh:

- The weather is so bad that this morning, you couldn't see the Castle from Princes Street. It is known locally as Jack The Ripper weather.
- The electricity has currently failed on Queen Street, George Street and Rose Street - the three streets leading up to Princes Street, and some of the main thoroughfares in the city.
- Posters are appearing everywhere with gay abandon and, frighteningly, someone is already flyering for their show on a side street from where I work.
- Goths banned from Princes Street Gardens after a group were "seen kicking a bin".
- Christmas Decorations go on sale today as part of the infamous "Santa Wars".
- I think I just saw Wayne Sleep walking past The Assembly Rooms.

The weather in Edinburgh today, unlike yesterday, is absolutely crap, just in time to welcome all the performers travelling up today and tomorrow for the start of the Festival on Wednesday. I finish my job on Wednesday, and begin reviewing / drinking / partying on Wednesday night...

I don't know how much time I'll have to write up this as well as writing for the Comedy Lounge Blog, the Comedy Lounge Festival Edition and the Edinburgh Evening News daily Festival section, but we'll see. It should be fun.

If you're considering coming up to see the Festival, I would heartily recommend it as the best place for any and every time of cultural experience, alongside the fun of standing next to people off the telly, and any number of ex-Big Brother housemates from the last three series. If anyone out there is also writing a blog about their Festival experience, even if just for one day's visit, please email us at info@comedylounge.co.uk so you can be added to our links.

Sorry for rubbish below. Blogger won't play with me today. Will try to fix it tonight.

Update: Blogger is my friend again. Post is fixed.

It’s the Friday Five! On a Sunday! Don’t judge me.

1. How long have you had a weblog?
Since two days after my 25th birthday. It was conceived in a moment of boredom at the office, while I tried but failed to be sacked from work for spending too much time on the internet. I am instead trying to achieve that in my new place of employment today.

2. What was your first post about?
I don’t know. I could have a look in the archive, but I think it was about the fact that I had managed to get a HTML link to work for me. It’s the littlest things that make my life worthwhile, you know. I still get the same thrill today.

3. How many changes (name, location, etc.) of your weblog have there been, if more than one?
I changed the name continually until I came up with one that I liked – I think it started as “Facts are meaningless”, which was a crap Simpsons quote that I had been sent that day via email. It went though a few until I landed on “What did you say?” because that is one of my most often repeated phrases. It is now “Drugs make me cool” because I have an email account with the same name, and also because it’s a sarcastic reminder to myself that smoking is neither big nor clever. I think “What did you say?” was better, and might change it back some time soon.

4. What CMS (content management system) do you use? Do you like it or do you want to try something else?
I don’t know what that is. I think the answer to that question might be Blogger, but since I’m not sure, I won’t go off on one about how rubbish Blogger is. Everyone else on the internet has already said that, but three years ago already. I’d change, only I’ve no idea what I’m even doing here, so the other packages are well beyond me. Plus, it’s free, and that’s my favourite currency.

5. Do you read people who have both a journal and a weblog? Or do you prefer to read people who have all of their writing in one central place?
Most of the blogs that I read are journals in themselves – I’m not really sure that there is that much of a difference these days. The sites I visit most often are the ones that mix a certain amount of personal detail in with their web links and rants on current affairs. I particularly enjoy blogs of people that I’ve met, but currently they are few and far between. I’m hoping to meet more people during the Festival this year that have blogs, so that should be interesting, just to see what kind of freakish demons they all are.

Further evidence, if evidence were needed, of my continued descent into high morals and middle age:

This is far too close to the Buffybot for my liking.

The dog's jumper is going very well, by the way.

Friday Five is back! So that saves me having to think about what to write in this posting.

1. Where were you born?
In a hospital in Dublin. I was born just after 5.10pm.

2. If you still live there, where would you rather move to? If you don't live there, do you want to move back?
I moved out of that hospital three days later, and I've never considered going back. Fnar. As for Dublin - I don't live there now. I live where I wanted to move to, and that's Edinburgh. Yes, I do want to move back, and have threatened to move back regularly in the two years since I moved to Scotland. However, now that my sister and her dog have moved in with me (did you know?) I don't have any immediate plans on going back. But I can't see myself buying property anywhere else but Ireland.

3. Where in the world do you feel the safest?
Sitting beside my mother.

4. Do you feel you are well-travelled?
Good God, no. But I'm not a very adventurous person, and I'm not someone that feels the need to travel at all. Unlike everyone else I know, I've never been to America, and probably never will. The two things holding me back are a lack of curiosity bordering on apathy, and a crippling phobia of flying. I'm fairly sure that I've been every county in Ireland though, and that's got to be some kind of achievement.

5. Where is the most interesting place you've been?
When I was 13, my family took a holiday in Yugoslavia, in a resort called Pula that no longer exists, as the following year the entire country was engulfed in a horrific civil war. That was a very beautiful area.

It's so sad.

I'm getting old before my time. Considering my reaction to last night's comedy show, it seems I would have been happier sitting at home knitting a jumper for my dog.

This bodes well for the Festival...

What a great idea – blogging for 24 hours for charidddeeee. Blogathon 2002 is mere days away, and the idea is that you get people to sponsor you, and then alienate everyone that ever knew you by telling them about any and everything you do for a full 24 hours. Which won’t be much, presumably, since you have to be in front of a computer at least once an hour.

But who am I to slag off such a lovely idea. It’d be even funnier if, like yesterday, Blogger collapsed on it’s arse and kept giving us the Error 503 message over and over again.

Last night, that meant I was going very much by guesswork trying to update the template on the new Comedy Lounge Weblog! Yes, that’s right – it’s not enough that I write this rubbish here, I’ve now got the nerve to post to another blog – this one concentrating on our preparation for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which starts far too soon for comfort. But all the links and stuff that I did last night worked! The first time! Cos I’m very good. Gosh, I’ve learnt a lot.

The Comedy Lounge blog is now my baby, and Susan is letting me do all the html and maintenance of it, cos she does all of the Comedy Lounge design. My official title is now Mini-Mong. And the worst thing? I’m very proud.

Due to popular demand, there now follows a weblog entry specifically and entirely about the newest addition to my household: Kesh, the small dog.

For background –
Kesh, the small Jack Russell dog that now lives with us, is a rescue dog. We got her from some kind of militant dog rescue association deal in Dublin that is not, as I incorrectly said before, the DSPCA. We don’t know how she was treated in her previous home, but can have a good guess by the way that she flinches every time someone raises a hand, absolutely abhors being picked up, buries her food rather than eat it and gets overexcited when you call her and then are nice to her when she comes. She’s also quite nervous of men, adores children, and has no idea how to play with anything.

She has this terrible habit, when we’re walking her around the park that sits right outside our back window, of going up to every single person in the park and greeting them like long lost friends. It was a bit awkward to begin with, but we’ve given up apologising to people. Most people in the park are themselves walking their own dogs, so they take it in their stride, and once she’s said hello, she tends to come speeding back to us, and insists we tell her how great she is.

We’re currently trying to introduce her to the joys of chasing sticks. We’ve made some good progress in the last week, in that she’s now showing a passing interest in sticks. At the moment, she’s got as far as the chasing part – which is probably the most important part of the process. What happens is, we pick up the stick and wave it about in front of her face. If we can keep her attention for long enough, we throw it – not too far, as her eyesight isn’t very good, and she doesn’t chase things she can’t see (obviously). She runs after it. She gets to it. She stops. She sniffs. She stands and looks at us. We walk towards the stick, pick it up, wave it about, and the whole thing starts again. Basically, what we’re doing at the moment is walking at a normal pace, stopping occasionally to pick up a stick and throw it.

A couple of days ago we thought she had mastered the ‘Bring it Here’ part of the throwing sticks procedure, but apparently that was just a one-off fluke, because she seems to have forgotten that again. Now when we cheerily yell ‘Bring it here!’ at the top of our voices, she just turns around and runs back to us, looking really pleased with herself. Other people in the park find it very funny, watching a dog hurl herself towards a stick, and then immediately ignore it.

We’re also trying to get her used to the company of other dogs. Whenever she encounters another dog, her response is to sing at it, in a kind of a cross between a whine and a howl. When other dogs approach her to talk to her, she does a strange manoeuvre that involves sitting, lying down and trying to crawl up our legs at the same time, while pinning her ears back and widening her eyes. We try not to intervene while any of this is happening, because she has to get used to other animals being around her, and so far she seems to be coping well. Occasionally, if the dog is the same size as her, she initiate playing by instinctively going down on her front too legs and kind of dancing about, but when the other dog then joins in, she doesn’t know what to do, and she instead reverts to crawling up our legs again.

Her newest discovery is that, when she barks in the middle of the night, we come into the sitting room to talk to her. We’re trying to get her used to sleeping on her own, because it’s apparently unhealthy to let a dog sleep in the bed with you. She’s starting to get a bit better, and only really barks every second night now, so we’re managing to get more unbroken sleep. The problem is, when you’re roused in the middle of the night, teaching the dog good habits is the last thing on your mind and it’s just easier to let her come back into the bed with you. Her favourite position in bed is lying on top of your arm as you lie on your side, and burying her nose into your neck, so she is effectively breathing right down your ear. That’s okay when you’re watching telly, but no good when trying to sleep.

We’re like proud parents, me and Edel, going in to work every day and telling people the latest update with the dog. I’ll stop now.

An aside on the topic of Big Brother.

With only three weeks to go, and having been a religious viewer from the very start – diligently tuning in every night at 10pm to watch the previous day’s highlights, alongside watching it live in the days that I had E4 – it is quite surprising that it only struck me last night how irritating every last one of the house mates is.

Don’t get me wrong – last night’s episode, what with the stripping, the falling over, and the yelling at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror, was one of the funniest things I have ever seen on television ever. But every time Tim came on the telly, my sister and I turned off the sound and instead sang happy songs over whatever worthless opinion he was spouting. Whenever Jade came on the screen, we both curled up into balls of embarrassment for the hapless child, and when she took her clothes off, we screamed in disgust at the other housemates for not stopping her. And then laughed for a very long time.

Alex shouting at himself in the bathroom mirror was glorious, an absolute gem of a “I do that too!” moment, and the mantra ‘Alcohol Is Not My Friend’ is my new email signature. But overall, I don’t think it would be possible to find 14 more self-righteous, over-inflated, egotistical, self-involved people outside of backstage at the Comedy Store on a Saturday night.

(It’s a slow day at work, alright?)

One more thing - James?

Email me!

hello hello.

It's been far, far too long. I've said this to one other person, and he reads this weblog, so I'm really sorry to be repeating myself Eoin, but these things happen when the people you correspond with are both lazy and prone to drinking alcohol at weekends.

The reason I've been appallingly rubbish with this weblog over the last three weeks are threefold:
(1) I've been ill
(2) I've not been online and
(3) I've got a dog.

These various excuses meant that
(1) up until this week, I couldn't stand up, let alone sit down, let alone email people or update the blog;
(2) I didn't have internet access until last weekend when my Mum was gracious enough to come over and make it all come true, and
(3) I've been out in the adjacent park with the dog for most of my free time.

My new flat is glorious, I'm terribly happy here, my sister has moved over, so there's someone to look after me for the moments when I can't actually walk, I'm having physiotherapy, I've nearly handed in my notice at work in time for the Edinburgh Festival, and generally all things are good and great and fab.

I've also been drinking. Isn't red wine fabulous?
(It really doesn't help your spelling.)

The dog is sitting on Edel's legs, watching Big Brother. In a minute, we'll take her outside to the park. My life is fabulous, have I mentioned?

Edel has said that I have to point out to whoever I'm writing to that I'm a "pisshead". I disagree. I say that it is just me embracing life. It could also be the fact that I've a lower tolerance of alcohol, but dammit that's nothing to be mocked for. If anything, doesn't it make me more endearing?

Answers to sharon@drugsmakemecool.com
(I don't have the energy to make that into a link. Good night y'all)

Here I am, sitting in my new flat. My sister is in her bedroom, banging nails into the wall, playing a CD of some of her weird, trendy music that I'm bound to be a great big fan of just as soon as they start getting popular, and she goes off them. The dog is lying on the sofa, staring at me - there isn't room for her to sit on my knee while I type on the computer, but she doesn't understand why I won't let her up here.

We had to get Windows 98 installed on this computer in order to upload any of the internet packages - apparently they don't make them for Windows 95 any more, which is very inconvenient of all of them. But now my computer sees more colours, and better pictures, and I might stop relying on the really heavily text based sites I've been hanging around, and get back on the porn train.

Ahem. Just joking, Mum.

So, allow me to introduce to you two new characters who will be appearing on a very regular basis in this blog:-

Kesh
Kesh is, at a guess, about 2 years old. She is a very little jack russel dog. We got her from the DSPCA, who rescued her from a horribly abusive home. She is beautiful, very jumpy, likes to be cuddled, wants to sit on your knee at all times, is a bit afraid of men, worried by other dogs, and barks at seagulls.

Edel
Edel is my little sister. She is 24 years old, moved to Edinburgh last Friday, knows more about music than any other girl I know, is currently banging on the wall of her bedroom.

There you go. I'm very tired tonight, so no links. Sorry. Big Brother is very good at the moment, though, isn't it? I'm very much looking forward to Jade being evicted on Friday.