Please remember to vote, Murricanes!

That's just a wee reminder in case I don't get a chance to remind you on the day, because I will be in PARIS, FRANCE.

You heard me.

Dog fostering is hard

Yesterday we had some people out to look at Woody. Bless him, he was on his absolute best behaviour, and their own labrador, who had accompanied them, seemed to like him enormously. Certainly the two of them tore around the garden like maniacs. The people themselves seemed really nice too, and mrmonkey and I were kind of hopeful that they might take him, and upset that this would mean he would leave.

So of course we spent the last 24 hours simultaneously looking forward to the easy walks we would have when he was gone, and how much easier our lives would be without him, and missing him like mad already because he is so funny and so affectionate and such a sweetheart.

Then we got a phone call to say that the couple had decided to go another way. Relief! But also worry. Will anyone ever take this dog from us? Will we have him for ever? On the other hand, the longer we have him, the closer he gets to some sort of maturity and, hopefully, more settled behaviour.

Then our foster coordinator said that he might have a good chance of being homed through a rescue in Sweden. This would be slightly traumatic for him because he will have to be locked in a box and go on a plane (which I can't see him liking AT ALL), but he will have a much better chance of a much better home in Sweden than he could possibly have in Ireland.

But I will miss him. I have to keep reminding myself of the days when I could cheerfully kill him, the days when he runs away and doesn't come back, when he knocks over the kids who come to pet him, when he steals cartons of butter off the counter and eats them, when he's just too much. I also have to keep reminding myself that I have two dogs of my own who've been pushed into the background by him, and who will be much happier when he's gone because he will no longer be stepping on them, sitting on them, squashing them against the wall, or crashing into them on the beach.

Mind you, this plan could easily fall through as well, and we could still have him for ever. I think that would be okay. Except when I don't.

With thanks to Chocolate Socialist

Whose livejournal I got this from.

I'm putting it here in case you're one of the three people who checks here and not there.

Happy Days (or, The One Where the Woman is Buried in Sand)

Here's what's great about the Internet. You can go and see a play that is layered with many meanings, and then come home and look up and see what everyone else thought the play was about. Although I often find the programme helpful, it usually only tells you what the playwright, director, and artistically contributing cast members think the play is about. And sure, what would they know?

On the face of it, Happy Days is a Samuel Beckett play in which a woman is buried up to her waist in sand, and her husband crawls about somewhere behind where she is buried. Then, in the second half SPOILER ALERT! she is buried up to her neck, and we are not sure, and she is not sure, if her husband is still alive or if he has died some time while we were off having drinks at the bar during the interval and talking about how nice the seats are in the Abbey nowadays. The woman, Winnie, reminisces about her life and tries to keep herself occupied and cheerful as her life moves from one day to the next, punctuated by startlingly loud bells that tell her when to wake and when to sleep. Although we couldn't figure out whether the bell was ringing more often in the second part because she was falling asleep more often, or whether she was falling asleep more often because the bell was ringing to tell her to, or because several days were passing in a brief period, or what. We then decided that this was how it is when you are reaching the end of your life and you live in an institution, and you can't tell where one day ends and one begins except for the bell, but which bell was it that you heard?

Happy days indeed.

And, of course, there is no great reason for Winnie to be at the end of her days, because she is only 50. So what is happening to her? Luckily for us, Sinead's mam was at the play with her that night, and she said that the play is about dementia. She recognized this for herself immediately, because it had occurred in her family. And, of course, such a reading makes total sense. Clinging on to routines and vague memories, trying to keep herself above the rubble when, all the time, she is increasingly immobilized by the disintegration of her own mind. I haven't seen anyone else give it this reading. The Irish Independent's reviewer suggested it was about love and marriage. I scoffed at the very notion. The Tribune review is more interesting, because it tells you about the controversy that surrounds Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw's interpretations of Beckett (indeed, in this production, Warner has replaced the sand in which Winnie is normally buried with a blasted, rubble-filled landscape, so that Winnie looks a little as though she has gone on holiday to Marbella but her hotel has fallen on her), but even his suggestion that Fiona Shaw "just about" pulls off what is essentially quite a boring play seems all wrong to me.

I was completely riveted by this play from the minute it started. I felt like I got it. I could empathise with the feeling, the fragments and stories that Winnie tried to communicate to her husband, herself, her audience, felt more real to me than anything else by Beckett I've ever seen. Maybe it's just Fiona Shaw. She is absolutely amazing. How she can give such a totally naturalistic performance in such an unnatural play is beyond me, but she does. But more than that, the structure of the play is familiar and understandable, even as it is horrible and unnerving. And by the end, I wanted to run down onto the stage and dig her out with my own bare hands.

And that's all without even mentioning the gun, Brownie, which deserves a whole essay all on its own (and no doubt has many devoted to it, perched on the edge of some English lecturer's desk somewhere), and which Winnie pulls out of her big, black, handbag along with her other ordinary totems, including her nail file and her compact mirror. She addresses the gun (but does not call it Sweetness), then decides she will leave it out. Just right here.

She's just going to leave it right here.

And right here it stays.

And you can't put it out of your mind, and somehow can't believe that she has ever put it out of her mind. She occasionally wanders back to it, suggesting it as a kind of fallback option if all else fails, but there's no real feeling that she's going to use it, at least not while she has the use of her arms. After that, of course, it will be too late.

Unless there was someone around who understood her and love her and knew what she would want.

So maybe it is a play about love after all.

Less is almost always more in television

The BBC has made Strictly Come Dancing ever so slightly worse AGAIN this year. Last year they brought in the extra Sunday night results show, which the fans (me) didn't ask for and don't really want, for several reasons.

1) It involves the bottom two couples from the leader board performing again. I don't understand this aspect of television vote-out shows; it means, in theory, that you have to watch the worst two performances from the previous night again. In Strictly, however, it means you have to watch two of the people who were least popular with the public (usually some no-mark from the middle of the board) perform again, and the judges get to bitch about not wanting to throw out either of them, before they throw out the one I liked better.

2) It is filmed on a Saturday night. Last year they tried to keep this a secret and pretend it was live again on Sunday night, but really, who are they kidding? Also the fact that it's filmed on a Saturday means you can just go and read the leaked results on Digital Spy and not bother watching the show on Sunday if you want. License-payers' money down the drain, if you ask me (hauls up bosom in a haughty manner).

3) You don't get the exciting live Strictly experience of having it all on Saturday night. The fun of the show is dissipated. It's no good.

This year, they've gone one worse. They've added extra couples (fine) and extra group dances (also fine), but instead of having boys week one and girls week two and everyone in together week three, it's boys week one, girls week two, boys week three and girls week four. Last night it was the girls dancing the quick step or the rhumba, and either Jessie Wallace or Jodie Kidd is going home.

This is completely unfair, and not just because I like Jessie Wallace and have a colossal girl-crush on Jodie Kidd, but because both of them are WAAAAYYY better than the four worst boys (John Sergeant, Mark Foster, Andrew Castle, and Don Warrington). Don't get me wrong, neither of them is brilliant, but they are both passable, and they could both easily get a lot better as the weeks go on. Only Don Warrington, of these four, has any hope; John Sergeant is currently at the very top of his game, and Andrew Castle and Mark Foster are both lumbering, gigantic eejits who don't even seem to understand what dancing is, never mind how to do it properly, and yet one of these nice women will be going home tonight.

Or went home last night, rather.

I do love how my other blog pals are writing long, impassioned posts about the credit crunch and international politics, while I rant about the unfairness of the rule changes on Strictly Come Dancing and post videos of my cats.

I know it seems as though my brain has fallen out of my ear, but it hasn't, honest. Think of my blog as like Ronan Collins's radio programme: a brief oasis of sanity in a troubled, economics-obsessed world.

Phear Teh Cuetness!

Good news for niños everywhere

Genetic freakery to end!

All your cats are belong to us!

Jane lives here now.

She is super disoriented at the moment, a state of mind which is probably not helped by the three other cats sniffing at her and making themselves big in her presence while she tries to find a cosy space near a human where she can sit and wait for the world to normalise itself.

I'm sure that if I was a more capable writer with less of a cold or flu, I would have something profound to say about circles and things coming home and remnants of a previous life and so forth.

But my head hurts and I'm tired and I just want to go to sleep and wake up normal.

A bit like Jane.

Oh Paddington, how could you?

Marmite? Really? You've given up marmalade for Marmite?

You treacherous little darling, you.

Chuck? It's your cousin Marvin. Marvin Berry!

The Smidge was starting to look a bit tubby in the tum area, and since that unfortunate incident with the door, and that other unfortunate incident with the futon (when I actually thought she had broken her leg), she is afraid of her toys. So what I reckoned she really needed was a new litle pal to run around with.

We wanted a kitten/cat who was dog friendly, cat friendly, and, most importantly, robust and healthy. Luckily, a lady on the Pets Ireland board was able to help us out, and she drove over from Finglas with a 16-week-old kitten called Berry. He is now named Marvin Berry, although I call him little Roo (he also goes by Mini Smidge). He's an amazing little cat. No sitting around in one room for a week waiting to acclimatise for him. Oh no. He was out and about with his face in everything inside the first couple of hours, and he marched boldly around the dogs for hours on end, annoying them just by being small and forbidden. Woody in particular is fascinated by him, and just follows him everywhere, trying to lick him and wash him and love him. I only worry that he might accidentally swallow him.

The Smidge and Linus have taken to him tremendously as well, and the running around plan is working very well. Not to mention the fact that he hasn't had so much as an ear mite since he arrived.

Marvin Berry is also an affectionate little thing. He likes to be picked up and cuddled, and he loves to nap beside me in the afternoons. He has a loud purr and he loves a bit of a chat, too. Now I have three cats who lie around me on the bed when I'm having a lie-in.

Of course, now that the ex-hubbo and his missus are heading back to the U.S., cat number four will be on the way in the next few weeks. Now that really will be fun in a house this size.

If it's August, it must be Edinburgh

It's so long since I blogged about anything of substance that much of what we did in Edinburgh has faded from my precious brain area, but some things remain. We saw some American comedians, including Louis CK again, who was patchy in his attempt to pull strands from his longer show, and Kristen Schaal, who did a cute sketch show with a guy called Kurt something or other (no, I'm not looking it up, I'm not well), but seems to be a little one-note. I am allowed to be bitter about her, because Mrmonkey has informed me that he will be divorcing me soon so he can go and marry her little squirrely face. Well, go on ahead. See if I care.

We also saw some English comedians, including Nina Conti and her monkey, who were both entertaining as always, although I was more creeped out than amused by her working her dad (Tom Conti, in case you hadn't guessed), into the show. It seemed a bit desperate, frankly; and Commodore Sir Tim Fitzhigham, who had the best directed show on the whole Fringe. Actually, Tim's show was very interesting. It told of his decision to emulate the great Shakespearean clown Will Kemp's feat of morris dancing from London to Norwich in nine days. There is film footage of Tim doing that very thing, and tales of the adventures he had along the way, all performed in a tiny little portakabin of a venue. Most entertaining.

Also we did see ComedyB in the largest venue on the Fringe, and he was entertaining as always, although we did want to kill the four women in the front row who wouldn't shut the hell up while he was talking. The annoying thing about this kind of stealth heckling is that nobody in the rest of the audience can hear it, but it's incredibly distracting for the performer, so they have to do something about it, but doing something about it makes them look a bit of a dick, because nobody else knows there's really a problem. So don't talk if you're in the front row, is the lesson there.

We also saw Craig Campbell's show. Craig is a burly loon of a Canadian comedian who had decided to go a different way this year; instead of your standard bloke-tells-joke show, he went for a horror/comedy one-man play about a guy who works the haunted house at carnivals, travelling all over Canada, taking drugs and scaring the shit out of people. It was really good. Craig's characterization was surprisingly effective, the show had a plot and a proper story and everything, and it was funny to boot. I'd recommend it, and I'm not a fan of the one-person play thing.

Off-hand I can't remember what else we saw, but I'm sure I'll remember later.

Back!

Hello.

My brain seems to have started working again at a time when my body seems to have shut down, so now's the time to get some blogging in while I'm laid up in bed.

First, some questions.

Did you send me a letter earlier in the year that I intended to reply to? If so, I still intend to do so and I'm sorry I haven't done so thus far.
Have you sent me a thank-you card in the last six months for some gift or service I gave you? If so, I did get it and I appreciate it and it was rubbish of me not to have acknowledged it.
Do I have books lying around that I saw in Oxfambooks and meant to send you in Canada or, perhaps, in Bristol? Yes, this is almost certainly the case. I will get round to it.
Have I collected your wedding present from the shop yet? Not yet, no.
Are you a Canadian comedian I saw in Edinburgh and whose show I promised I'd blog so people googling it would find a glowing review? Yeah, I didn't do that either.

Man, I feel better now.

Amusement

New car!

Wii fit update

"I haven't seen Keith in quite a while," said the Wii Fit yesterday, while Keith was in the room. Poor little blind Wii.

Anyway, after just over a month of playing Wii Fit, here's the routine I've moved on to:

6 minutes of hula hoop
4 minutes of running on the spot
30 minutes of step
10 minutes of running around the living room (I say "running", sometimes it's little more than shuffling)
10 minutes of boxing

I'm sure I'm doing myself some damage somewhere. Oh well. 40 more years to find out!

Much news

In brief:

Mister Monkey and I attended the Tom Waits extravaganza in Dublin's tent city. It was a magnificent gig, but did little to dispel the idea that people are idiots. Someone brought their baby along, which we discovered when it started crying loudly, and there seemed to be a lot of the IFI phenomenon of blokes trying to watch the gig while their accompanying womenfolk were texting their mates or trying to talk to their bloke because they were bored shitless and don't like Tom Waits (or, in the case of the IFI, whichever classic western happens to be on). Otherwise, fantastic.

Then, on Sunday, R&D and the kids came for a visit. A lot of Wii was played and some people were humiliated by their five year old sons. I'm not naming any names. We also had a visit to the beach where it wasn't exactly nice, but it wasn't completely pissing down with rain, so A ran into the water, got soaked inside two seconds, and whipped his kecks off for a good run up and down. D and I discussed the morality of photographing other people's kids when they are in this state, and we came to the conclusion that it's all a bit of a minefield.

L did a lot of screaming all day long. I encouraged her by screaming back. We had a good time.

HOWEVER! While we were in the living room having a great time and playing Wii and screaming at each other, Woody Chops was out in the kitchen figuring out how to get into the press where his food is kept. Having worked out how to open the door, he then proceeded to gorge himself until he took on the look of an Indian cow or some other animal that is thin all over with a massively distended stomach. We didn't realise what he'd done; we thought he had BLOAT, which is very dangerous for dogs, because it can lead to TORSION and DEATH. So we called the vet at 11pm and rushed him up to the surgery, where he was knocked out (I don't recommend holding your dog in your arms while he's put under a general anesthetic. The sudden slump is unbearably upsetting), and a garden hose was rammed into his gullet, through which he was fed liquid paraffin and water. It all got very messy, with me at the very messy end, holding his tail and keeping a bowl under his bum. It was Monday evening before his stomach was really back to its proper size, but by then he'd forgotten the whole incident and was trying to gnaw our arms off because he was dying of starvation. When questioned by the vet on Tuesday morning, Woody admitted that he had learned nothing from the adventure and would still eat all things if the opportunity arose. We will be baby-proofing the food press from now on.

This was all most unfortunate, because a nice man came to visit us on Monday with a view to giving Woody a home. I think, in our heart of hearts, we were a little conflicted about this man, and were almost hoping we would get a bad vibe off him so we could refuse to give him our precious baby, but he was very nice and Woody seemed to like him. In that he tried to put the man's whole fist in his mouth, which is the Woody sign of approval, and the man didn't care that Woody was all greasy from the paraffin and clearly a bit mental. If the man's homecheck goes okay and he still wants to take Woody, well, he will be taking him soon.

In among all this, I have started my cognitive behavioral therapy. The lady is very nice, even if she does believe that a person's "energy" actually comes off them as physical heat (sure thing, lady!) and the therapy seems to be doing me some good. I even went into Dublin last night to go to the pub. Even more shocking, several of the people I was meeting in the pub were people I have not met before! And, Mister Monkey did not come with me! And, the pub was particularly packed because James May and Oz Clarke were there with a film crew filming stuff for the BBC! So it was your basic Friday night disaster waiting to happen. But I went anyway. What is more, I had a good time.

That is all my news. I hope that you have also had a pleasant week, filled with incident.

Ace of Spies update

Do you have UKTV Drama on your telly? Then you can join the Reilly Ace of Spies fun this weekend. They're repeating the series again from Saturday, 7pm.

Now we can catch the first three episodes, which we missed last time.

Hooray!

Louis CK at the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival

Did you have a chance to come to this gig with us and then not come? Man, you were wrong to make that choice. This was one of the funniest comedy gigs I've been to in years. I was laughing so much I was crying and whimpering and, yes, I was almost relieved when Barry Murphy came on halfway through to read (for about the millionth time) some of his fake poetry, because it meant I could get a little break from laughing.

I had not been to the Comedy Carnival before, assuming that, as an event organized for Irish people to go to en masse, it would be dreadful. When we got to the Iveagh Gardens last night, however, we found a peaceful, sunny place where the fountains were still running and nerdy looking guys were sitting around with women far too beautiful for them, and everyone just seemed to be having quite a nice time. Plus, it wasn't very crowded (I think going to the very last gig on the very last night of the festival probably had a lot to do with this). It seemed a magical place. Even when the venue opened and we went inside, there was a rush for the seats at the front, and everyone sat politely through Barry Murphy's opening two minutes (as some ker-azy German dude! Fantastic!) although everyone really just wanted him to go away so we could see Louis CK.

Who is shorter than he looks on television. On television he looks like a giant, but he clearly must surround himself with tiny co-stars, because in person he just looks like a standard bloke-sized person.

We had been told by the security guy on the way in that CK had died on his arse on Friday night and some people found his stuff really offensive. I can only imagine that such people must live in some kind of fairy world where normal people don't live and nobody ever has a bad thought about anyone or anything, because there is nothing that Louis CK said that I haven't heard expressed by another person, somewhere, at some point, and thought "wow, you must be in a very bad mood today", but not, "wow, you're an offensive person". I just never heard anyone express these things so very well, and all at one time, and quite so vividly. He doesn't just tell you stories about a funny thing that happened to him or something he saw or how his marriage didn't work out and now he has shared custody of his two daughters. He builds you a picture of his whole life and where it all went wrong and how very angry and sad he is about it, but he makes this condition seem normal, and you feel okay because sometimes you feel like that too. For all that he spends the first ten minutes complaining about fat, white people, he then goes on to talk about stuff that only fat, white people can really identify with.

The meal is not over when I'm full, he says, the meal is over when I hate myself.

Truly, it was an excellent night of comedy, and it's always lovely to see R&D ( ha ha, our friends are Research & Development), so it was an all round great night out.

Also, the mystery of such an excellent comedian dying on his arse is explained in his blog, so perhaps we were very lucky after all.

Anyway, Louis CK is playing in London throughout much of August, with a brief stop over in Edinburgh on August 15th and 16th. If you have never seen Louis CK live, and you are a grown adult with some experience of the world and the people in it and you would like to hear someone feel your pain on these topics, then I urge you to go and see him.

You will not be sorry.

Except about the shambles your life has become.

Black Book

Ian reviewed this ages ago, and everyone has been saying that it's a good film, so I recorded it off Film 4 months and months ago, and it's been sitting in the Sky Plus menu for all that time. Given the reception this film got when it was released, as if somehow the technically fine but resolutely shlocky Verhoeven had finally made a worthwhile film, I was concerned that it would be lacking the bonkers full-tilt Verhoeven approach, and that it would somehow be worthy and a bit boring.

Worthy yes. Boring, certainly not. Exciting espionage! Handsome resistance folks! Brave young women! Bad, bad, bad Nazis! Some good Nazis too! An absolutely amazing performance from the leading lady! Typical Verhoeven attitude to having people get their kit off!

One of the things I really loved about the film is the fact that the lead character, Rachel (or Ellis, to give her her alias), has to do a lot of unpleasant things in order to try to find out what has happened to her parents, who has betrayed them, and how to stay alive. This involves a lot of lying and sleeping with people she doesn't care about, which is par for the course for attractive ladies in films. It does, however, also involve other things, like running and shooting and hiding in rivers and other action things that blokes get to do in films. Also, at no point does it look as though the film itself is taking a prurient interest in her. This is simply what a gal had to do to get by in occupied countries, and there are worse things that could happen.

Both Carice van Houten and her co-star (and, I think, real-life partner) Sebastian Koch, are excellent in this movie, and I look forward to seeing them both in the biopic of South African poet Ingrid Jonker, which is, according to the IMDB, to be released some time this year.

Stop press: entire point of Wii Fit discovered

After you've been doing your exercises with the other Miis for a while, you can unlock "free jogging" and "free step", which, in the case of step (because I'm not exactly ready for "free running" yet) means that you can do ten minutes of stepping, keeping your rhythm using clicks from your hand controller (FNARR!), while... drumroll...

WATCHING TELLY!