Events of 2007:tl;drTuesday 2nd January 2007Today I got a tattoo. Given how I've been hyping this up to anyone who would listen, a failure to secure some skin ink at this stage would be damaging and embarrassing both personally and professionally. I decided to go for a Latin phrase "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", which means "Who watches the watchmen?" The answer, of course, helpfully provided by my wife, is "An organisation administrated by civilians, with appointed members through government agencies working from a democratic mandate". Way to take the fun out of it. Also, there's no way I'm translating all that into Latin and getting it inked onto the other arm. No way in hell. 
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? At least I now have a wordless answer for the question which witless people keep asking: "What have you done with that college education?" Monday 8th January 2007We flew from LAX to Heathrow on the way back from our now annual pilgrimage to Los Angeles. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the opening video from the first Half Life game by Sierra games, but the shuttle bus from Heathrow Terminal 4 to Heathrow Terminal 1 is redolent of same. You're in a moving shuttle, but the route it takes seems to give a representative snapshot of all the inner workings of the airport, showing the aeroplanes landing and taking off at first, then zipping through where the mechanics work, covered in oil, screwing things into parts which presumably go into aeroplanes. Then we moved onto another area which had fleets of trucks with catering materials. I waved at a large black man wearing a flourescent vest, but he didn't wave back. This made me nervous. When we finally reached our destination, and were ushered out of the shuttle, I was expecting, in my twilight, sleep-deprived state, some sort of rumbling industrial accident. Then Heathrow would be crawling with mutants from another dimension, and it would be left to me to save the city of London with nothing but a crowbar. Occasionally I would bump into customs officers, who would address me as "Gordon", but I must be wary, for these men are as likely to have been sent by Tony Blair to cover up the whole thing. Disappointingly, none of this happened. We boarded our flight to Shannon without incident. Saturday 26 January 2007While working in my shop today, I noticed smoke billowing out through one of the cabinets. A quick investigation revealed that the fusebox next door had melted, caught fire, and was sending its smokey goodness in my direction. My father left quickly, I grabbed my jacket and a Mars bar before joining the assembling throng on the pavement. There's nothing worse, I reasoned, than trying to eat a melted Mars bar. Then I thought that if this was an electrical fire, and we were all connected, that I should really disconnect our power supply at the mains. Alas, our fusebox is upstairs and towards the front of the building, from where smoke was now pouring through the cracks in the window. So I braved the maelstrom of reduced vision, and ran upstairs to switch off the mains. It got so bad near the fusebox that I couldn't actually see anything, but I know where it is. Then I heard a quiet mewling, and there, sitting on a shelf, confused, frightened and lonely was a tiny kitten. He must have got in through a window and didn't know where to go. I just grabbed the little guy gently, bundled him up carefully into my jacket, and charged out of the room. Once safely outside the building, I released him to the applause of the assembled crowd. Of course, nothing in this particular paragraph ever happened. Soon the fire brigade arrived, full of sound and fury, signifying an end to the hot clamour. It took about three hours to sort it all out. I was tired and hungry and there was smoke all over me and in my hair. I just wanted to go home. Sunday 27 January 2007I got a call this morning from the alarm company.
Monday 29th January 2007A conversation with the ESB man, while the two of us were staring at the fusebox:
Wednesday 4th April 2007And so my closing-down sale moves through its final week. I have huge signs all over my shop, with big capital letters on them: "50% OFF ALL STOCK!" However, I still get many people asking me things like: "How much is off the stock?" and "Is this watch in the sale?" Saturday 14th April 2007Ships!It seemed like a good idea at the time. I should leave the house at least once before I die, I thought, so I decided to go to Dublin to Meet People. In the crazy world of Internetland, these things are called Meets - where a bunch of people (otherwise known to each other in an online fashion only) arrange to meet, and instead of typing things to each other in a small window, they talk out loud, sending their words through the air and into the ears of the other people. It's a much less efficient system of communication, obviously, with less respect for conventions of grammar and spelling, and a far greater chance that conversations will wander off-topic. Spam is rife. I had decided to stay in Dublin on the Friday night, anticipating that I might have to get up early to meet people. As it turns out, I was right. I went to the bus stop at 10:30 to meet Davage (not her real name) and Pandora (not her real name), both of whom managed to be inebriated, Davage to the degree where walking straight was an issue. There's a time and a place for everything and it's called college! Nevertheless, "then there were three". The group meandered through the city like a river which had never heard of gravity: desperate, forlorn and 66% drunk. There was nothing to take the hive mind from the hideous reality of Meety Doom but some zombie comics, two badges bearing the slogan "1 <3 binge Drinking", and a packet of Pro-plus caffeine tablets. For people like us, for whom there is no hope, and no sympathy, there is only one option: St. Stephen's Green. It was sunny and bright in Dublin, which immediately discounted any possibility that I would "enjoy" being there in any conventional sense of the term. Good sense prevailed, and I left the girls to sober up alone while I went back to my hotel. At this point, the only thing preventing me from going home was, after a few phone calls to several service operators, the realisation that the next bus wouldn't be leaving for at least another four hours, and that I would have to pass the girls on the way to the bus stop in any case. 
Holly, myself and Fuzzy Moo in St. Stephen's Green. As I learned from my college days, sometimes all a party needs to kick off is for me to leave. Today was no exception. When I returned, having logged out of the hotel (apparently "logged out" is not the correct term, and led to much LOLZ and OMGZ from the group about how I need to get out more, prise the keyboard from my fingers, etc.) there were more people having fun (I assume), including Fuzzy Moo (not her real name) and Ronan (not his real name). What the hell, I thought, this can't get any worse, right? Wrong. We all repaired unto the Temple Bar, famously described by our glorious leader Bertie Ahern as "Dublin's answer to the West Bank". Charitable commentators have guessed that he meant "Left Bank". Having been there a number of times, I can confirm that it has much in common with both that fashionable quarter in Paris, and that bomb-strewn wasteland in Israel. We ended up in Eamon Doran's, where an attempt was made to order a sandwich.
About ten minutes later, he came over and asked me to pay him ten euro, which I did. And ten minutes after that, I got a steak sandwich. By that time, I really wasn't hungry. Tuesday 24th April 2007(this entry is dedicated to Dan Kelly) I've been closed for two weeks, now, more or less. All the shelves are empty. Some of the ceiling-high display cabinets are sitting in the middle of the shop floor awaiting removal to a more suitable location. Despite the obvious redundancy of the question, I had two ladies fight their way through the detritus and ill-arranged fixtures to ask if I was still open. No! You fools! I am not open! Saturday 19th May 2007And so, having sold our house in preparation for the move to Los Angeles, we have returned unto my father's bucolic demesne, the family home, situated some miles outside the urban centre of Clonmel. To the front, a quiet road with cars randomly whipping past, and a river beyond. To the rear, various patches of green stretch up some low hills. The humble rural folk who live here indicate, through a subtle series of nods, winks and coded responses, that I am one of them. I have been explaining the procedure to my wife:
My wife's family, who were recently set upon us for a visit, have returned unto their stronghold in the deserts of Riverside County, California. Now, we are waiting for news from the US Immigration office. However, Alles is very much not in Ordnung. There is crap all over the place, in the living room, and in the garage. Also, there is a certain mental anguish in jumping down from a broadband connection to the dial-up connection my father has. A friend of mine is coming down tomorrow to see if he can do something in a wireless way. I'm not too hopeful though. My father lives so far outside the town that cable television won't service him. In fact, the only way he could get cable would be if he shot someone and ended up in Limerick jail. They have cable there. Thursday 24th May 2007I voted today, in our general election, and was struck by the poverty of the candidates. None of them, either through attractive policies or other considerations, demands my vote. Once more, questions about the nature of PR surface amongst the population (see Friday 4th October 2001). I try my best to answer, but sometimes the logic escapes even me:
My polling booth was situated in a primary school, whose rooms were vacated for the day, the month, the summer. To the bemusement of the two erstwhile supine guardians of the ballot-box, on the blackboard, on a whim, I wrote "Emily Dickinson is God" and walked out. That they may never understand. Earlier this morning, I had a dream that one of my teeth came out. It was quite loose to begin with, and felt sharp between my fingers. I have this dream with such regularity that I am beginning to entertain the idea that my brain is trying to tell me something. Once, after three such extradental dreams in one week, I resolved to visit the dentist, concealing from him my darker purpose; all was well, however. Perhaps this is what Hamlet would have called "a thing of nothing". Suggestions welcome. Sunday 17th June 2007The lack of broadband internet access concomitant with our return to the family home is beginning to pall. Dial-up is not enough to wean me from the delights of 24-hour streaming Big Brother with its perky blonde twins (Jesus tapdancing Christ the possibilities!), nor to dissuade my interest in the Paris Hilton case, which has been unfavourably compared with more severe sentences doled out for the commission of lesser offences. I am thinking in particular of that poor lady in Virginia, Elisa Kelly, who provided her 16-year-old son and his friends with alcohol in order to maintain control; 27 months in jail, and the odium of her peers. Irony check: those fine legal minds most in favour of the latter case's clear breach of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution (the police did not have a warrant when they raided her private residence) would also defend the misappropriation of the Second Amendment, to the death. Wednesday 20th June 2007I had an appointment today with a doctor in Ballinlough, Cork. The US embassy has demanded tests. Apparently, I have to declare myself ritually clean before presenting myself to the elders. Finding Ballinlough will, I surmised, not be a problem. A friend of mine called Joanne, to whose house I have been on more than one occasion, lives just around the corner, and another friend of mine called Brian, to whose house I have been once, lives even closer. However, I had forgotten is that these visits happened over ten years ago, and in the interim Cork City Council has decided to render streets one-way which were not previously thus inclined, and to completely block off other streets which were previously open to all. Add to the mix: the chronic Cork rain; the tiny streets (the meagre width of which does not dissuade their denizens from parking on both sides, rendering them almost unnavigable (e.g. Barrack St)); the manner in which all Cork streets seem to be winding uphill, regardless of the direction of travel; and the chain of roadworks that seemed to be in a relay competition, handing off to each other just as I thought a particular set of cones was ending. All this took a long time. Embarrassingly, when I had made my way through the city and to Ballinlough, I discovered that the doctor's office is about two hundred yards from the by-pass, so I could have just driven through the Jack Lynch tunnel, taken the Mahon Point exit, and been there in about five minutes. As per the instructions of the US embassy, I am now vaccinated against measles, diphtheria, mumps, tetanus and rubella, so I don't have to pass on those rubella sorbets anymore. A whole new world! He also asked me some standard questions about drinking, smoking and exercise ("no" to all three) and sent me to the Bon Secours hospital to get some blood tests and a chest X-Ray. Cue more roadworks, narrow winding uphill streets, etc. and thence to the Bon Secours hospital on college road, wherein there was no parking. There is a lot of waiting in hospitals. Waiting for the nurse to turn up to take some blood (for some reason, called "Phlebotomy"*), waiting for the test results to come back, waiting, waiting.** They had to take the chest X-Ray twice, because my ankh showed up on the first one. Despite pleas to the effect that my friends would surely find it amusing, I was not allowed to take the discarded X-Ray home. Eventually, I made it home. Later, in the night, I got call from the doctor:
*If I ever get a job taking blood samples, I will insist that co-workers, friends and family refer to me as "Phlebotomy Man". **I hate waiting. Human beings are not designed by nature to wait. Waiting is an anaethema to everything that makes us who we are. We are designed to do, to create, to be: not to wait. Hospitals and airports are the main offenders in this area. Thursday 5th July 2007There was some trouble in town today. Members of a pro-life group were calling for signatures to persuade the government to render abortion even more illegal than it is already, where a combination of ignorance, illogicality and moral cowardice sees 10,000 women a year travel from Ireland to England to have safe, legal abortions. They had large cardboard stands on the main street, plastered with lies and melodrama, and photographs of aborted foetuses in buckets. I regard this sort of thing as manipulative and unacceptable, so I registered my disapproval by making a witty comment about coathangers. This did not go down well. A challenge of some sort was issued, and I was forced to stop. An animated discussion led to one of my interlocuter's friends fetching a garda. The garda felt that what I was doing constituted harrassment. As I wished to point out the irony of being chastised for harrassment while a large aborted foetus was smiling down at us, I asked him to turn around. He must have been on some sort of course, because he refused, perhaps fearing that I was engineering a distraction wherein I could make good my escape. These details are necessary to understand the following exchange between myself and the policeman:
Eventually I left. Or I was sent away. It doesn't matter. All that matters was that as soon as I got home, I called the police station and registered a complaint about the group, who I felt must be breaking some sort of obscenity law. The garda I spoke to seemed a little over-eager to resolve the complaint, telling me he would send someone directly to move them on. I got the impression that he was waiting by the telephone, hoping someone would complain about these fuckos (for fuckos they are). Thursday 19th July 2007Fear and loathing at the U.S. embassy.The building itself is a travesty of architecture, an prime example of a genre labelled by me as "retro-futuristic" - it's hard to describe, but instantly recognisable; a style which can only be excused as something that people living some time ago imagined the future would look like. So far, the only places I have found retro-futuristic styles are old science-fiction movies and the US embassy in Ballsbridge in Dublin. Two days ago, I had an appointment for one o'clock, so I arrived at 12:30, in light rain, but the man inside the protected glass portico told me that there is no room at the inn to wait. Afterwards, recollections of this would be full of Sophoclean irony, as most of my time was spent waiting. Before I was allowed into the main building, there was some discussion about my ankh and my digital watch, leading to laughter and general unpleasantness from the security people, who were armed. Once inside, I presented myself to a lady behind some more protected glass, and waited for further instructions. However, the lady doing the preliminary interviews did not seem to understand how to work the intercom correctly, with the result that no one could hear when they were being called. Conversely, when the personal interviews were taking place, everyone's private details were being broadcast to everyone in the waiting area. Eventually, I was called, and presented my many, many documents, and was told to sit down and wait again. Then I was called to talk to the actual pro-consul, to have the "interview" proper. I had imagined that I would be taken into a small room, perhaps with two dark-suited agents, and be forced to explain my existence while a third agent looked on, leaning against a filing cabinet in the corner, smoking. They might shine a light in my face and ask me dark, unseemly questions about political affiliations, employment intentions and maybe even my sexual history. This did not happen. As it turned out, my "interview" took place at another counter, through protective glass, with an old man who had two hearing aids, and basically amounted to "Sign here". The form which required my signature was engagingly obvious, asking for my assurance that I am neither a communist nor a terrorist; a criminal nor a rapist. I was then informed that the embassy computers were misfiring, and to come back two days later, which is today. I got my visa, in the form of a sticker covering the whole of page 8 of my passport. I also received a secret envelope, which I have been instructed not to open, but to hand to the immigration people at my first point of entry. I must enter the country between now and next January, and apply for full residency, or the visa expires. Operation "Great Escape" is go. Friday 10th August 2007Over the past few weeks I've been trying to catch up with friends of mine. God knows when I'm coming back again, so I should really make the effort. I'm chronically lazy, though, and if the choice is between driving for ages across the Limerick country-side and just sitting at home watching television ... but fuck all that. Yesterday, I found myself in the wilds of Limerick at Mick and T's house. Mick is Michael Cosgrave, whose equanimity in the face of total societal breakdown has inspired us all; T. is Theresa Storey, his wife, who ran my safe house during my first year of college. I lived with Michael during my second year of college. Oh, I could tell you stories that would bend your bones. 
Myself, Michael, Theresa, Una and Martin. Recently, it has been brought to my attention that a lot of my stories begin with the words, "When I was in college ...", which may indicate that I peaked too early. However, it reminded me that a lot of those stories involved one of the people above. These days, they are, from left to right: an unemployed jeweller; a history lecturer in UCC; an organic food producer; a government archaeologist; and a priest. Who saw ANY of that coming? Wednesday 22nd August 2007I'm here! We managed to hack our way through the undergrowth of incompetent airport staff, surly immigration folk and ornery customs officers to land in John Wayne Airport, Orange County, California. I don't really feel like going into it, but what the hell, CSI isn't on for another half hour. This happened just before US immigration in Shannon. This lady does not work for US Immigration, she works for Aer Rianta:
I got one of the white cards. Written on the top, in clear letters, was an exemption for aliens holding immigrant visas, for instance, me. So I went back.
I go away and fill in the card. As soon as we get past, the actual US Immigration Officer (no bunch of roses either), who is sitting not ten yards away from the first bunch of roses, dismisses without any words the white card when it is presented to her. Thursday 6th September 2007I arrived in America two weeks ago, in 45 degree heat, in Riverside County, California. My arrival coincided with a power blackout which lasted for days, which means no air conditioning, refrigeration, etc. Later that day there were two earthquakes. Earthquakes are not cool. The heat became unbearable and we ran to the valley - you know things are bad when you're running into the valley. But at least they had power there, and internets. My current agenda is to get a social security number and then a driver's license. That's really all you need to live out here. That and air conditioning. 
Me standing on Conard Avenue. This is me just around the corner from where I'm living now, in the middle of the desert, in a place called Lake Elsinore in California, about 100 miles away from Los Angeles, but that's 100 American miles, so with their nice big flat roads it's really not that far at all. Wednesday 10th October 2007
Thursday 8th November 2007Things are slotting into place nicely. My permanent resident visa, or "green card" has arrived, so I can seek proper employment with an easy mind. I passed my driving test on the first attempt, which was nice. The driving test over here is much easier than the test in Ireland. It's about ten minutes long, and they really just take you around the block. If they can see you can handle yourself at all, they're happy to pass you. My tester was a really nice guy - he even prompted me sometimes. The car licensing authority in the US is called the DMV, and they have a reputation for recruiting from the most surly and unhelpful (and borderline incompetent) branch of society. However, our experience of Temecula DMV was entirely positive. 
My VW Rabbit Thursday 27th December 2007Frequent visitors to London will be familiar with that strange feeling, when you have finally figured out not only that the underground trains are the secret to getting around, but exactly how they work. It's as though the whole city just flops open in front of you like a gutted fish. In Los Angeles, the underground trains have, to put it politely, a different demographic, and so that same feeling is reserved for finally figuring out not only that the freeways are the key to getting around, but how they work. Armed only with a short series of numbers and letters, I managed to collect my laptop computer from the repair shop in Orange County. This series of numbers and letters was: 15N 91W 55S 5S La Paz. On the way home, the sequence was: La paz 5N 55N 91E 15S. Freeway driving around Los Angeles is fun and frustrating in equal measure. It's fun, because you know you're getting to your destination as quickly as possible, and generally the roads are well-laid out and free-moving. It's frustrating because when it's busy, you're stuck in slow-moving traffic with no way out - the numbers above do not allow for alternative routes. The most annoying part of the thing for me is on-merges, where your lane suddenly swoops down (or up) onto a six-lane speeding freeway. Usually, about three hundred feet is allowed to get onto the highway before your lane steers into a wall. You will probably be travelling at around 60 mph at this time, and you better hope that there is a gap in traffic within that three hundred feet, or you are doomed.
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