There's Been A Murder

In a stroke of total genius, my parents got myself and the Bear a murder mystery weekend as a Christmas present. Having been itching to get my Jessica Fletcher on since the start of the year, the weekend in question finally arrived and OH THE FUN. It took place in Faithlegg House Hotel, just outside Waterford city, which is probably the fanciest hotel I've ever stayed in and perfectly lends itself to a weekend of murder scenes and clue-solving, because, y'know, LOOK AT IT:

It's just so...murdery.

When we were checking in on Friday evening, the people ahead of us were duly sent off to their numbered rooms, but when our turn came we were handed a key and informed that we would be staying in the Cornelius Bolton room. The whatnow?

HOLY SHIT OUR ROOM HAS A NAME AND NOT A NUMBER, thought I.

It turns out I wasn't getting excited for nothing, as the room was MASSIVE, had a super high ceiling, four huge windows, an enormous bathroom and most importantly - A MOTHERFUCKING FOUR POSTER BED. You see, it has long been an ambition of mine to sleep in a four poster bed, so my parents, the big legends, only went and saw to it. Achievable goals, people. Achieveable goals are entirely the way to go.


After jumping up and down on the bed for a bit (because...obviously) and having The Best Steak Sandwich Of All Time in the bar, it was time to get acquainted with our host, Detective Inspector Lazarkie. The theme for the murder mystery was a medical one, as it was set in a Chicago hospital. We were informed that a hotshot surgeon had been murdered, handed a list of suspects and split into named teams. I was raging that we weren't on Team Fletcher. RAGING. Instead, the Bear and I found ourselves on Team Ace Ventura, which was ok really, seeing as he's probably my second favourite detective. I guess.

On Saturday, we could inspect the murder scene, while different clues were posted on the wall of the "incident room" (i.e. hotel ballroom) throughout the day, which provided bits and pieces of backstory and motive for each suspect.

Dun dun DUUUN!

We had most of the day to ourselves, so we hung out in our amazing room, had a go of the jacuzzi, steam room and sauna and generally lolled around the place like fancy bastards. The only time we left the hotel was to procure a bottle of Jameson and two dusty bottles of ginger ale from the nearby shop. Best. Day. Ever.

On Saturday night, there was a press conference where we were introduced to the suspects, and got to question them between courses at dinner. It was a fancy dress dinner, so in the week beforehand, we decided to use costumes we already had in the house, namely a dog suit for the Bear and a sheep costume for me. Not just any sheep though, Chris the Sheep from Father Ted, as in KING OF THE SHEEP.

However, as the rest of the sixty-odd participants filed into the room, it turned out that they either didn't bother dressing up, or adhered to the hospital theme and arrived in scrubs or sexy nurse outfits. While the Bear and I sat at the table dressed as a dog and King of the Sheep.

ANYWAY.

By the end of dinner, the suspects had been narrowed down to two possibilities, so we had to fill out solution sheets with who we thought the murderer was and what their motive might have been. After a bit of disagreement with the rest of the team, in particular one woman who wouldn't let go of her theory that the male murder victim and one of the female suspects were the same person and then insisted that it was actually a particular character's mother who WASN'T EVEN A SUSPECT, LADY we settled on an answer. (The same woman said she didn't like Jessica Fletcher earlier on in the day, which elicited gasps of horror from both me and the Bear. Seriously.)

We got to play Operation at dinner. Most fucking fiddly game ever.

The next morning, the killer was revealed, but all the teams had chosen correctly. So the winners were determined by two quiz rounds from Friday night where we had to identify celebrities from photos where we could only see their eyes, and name the TV shows and films that ten theme tunes came from. Team Ace Ventura kicked ass at both rounds and we were declared the winners, snagging a bottle of wine each for our efforts. Hooray! A tremendous weekend was had by all.

Sweet Valley High Revisited - Heartbreaker

I love writing these Sweet Valley High posts, but MY GOD they take forever to do. I usually end up reading the book I'm recapping about three times over, between counting things, looking for ridiculous quotes that I forgot to make a note of the first time around, and generally making sure I've covered all the most hilarious/weird parts. I'd love it if it was my actual job to just read SVH books all day and write smart-arse blog posts about each one, but unfortunately real life and real life work and hangovers and suchlike have a tendency to get in the way. But anyway, enough of that. Onwards to book eight! 

Sweet Valley High #8: Heartbreaker


Our story begins with Jessica rehearsing the drama club's spring play, Splendor in the Grass, with Bill Chase and having him kiss her over and over as she insists it's not right each time. You see, at the end of the last book, Bill was supposed to go on a date with Elizabeth, but Jessica went in her place as revenge for him turning her down when she asked him to one of SVH's four thousand dances this one time. On the date, he told her he loved her, then Jessica revealed that she was Jessica and since then has somehow convinced him that it's actually her that he loves. For the hell of it.

At school, Elizabeth sees Todd with his arms around some mysterious hottie, who turns out to be Patsy Webber, an old girlfriend of his. Patsy has just come back from living in Paris, and has "coppery-red hair cut fashionably short in back, with a tumble of curls that dipped over her forehead", which is totally sophisticated you guys, and makes her sound like she's a member of The Holograms. Elizabeth gets all jealous of how glamourous and sexy Patsy is and tries to convince herself that she has nothing to worry about.

Jessica gets Bill to call over to her house with a script for the play, despite the fact that she's not even going to be there as she's got a date with Tom McKay. So Bill turns up and is all disappointed when Elizabeth answers the door. Bill leaves and drives off to the beach to stand around in moonlight and feel his feelings. We learn that Bill had a girlfriend called Julianne back when he was living in Santa Monica. Julianne was cute and blonde and into surfing, just like Bill and "they were both crazy about old movies and monster comics and Mexican food". She actually sounds like great craic and more fun than pretty much everyone in Sweet Valley. But...disaster struck! (Of course it did, it's SVH after all.) They had a big argument one night at a party, so Julianne stormed off and got a lift home with her friend and was killed in a horrible car accident. We also learn that he turned Jessica down that one time ages ago because she reminded him too much of Julianne.

While Jessica is busy fucking around with Bill's feelings, DeeDee Gordon is wistfully pining for him from the wings. At one point Bill is giving DeeDee a surfing lesson while everyone is out at the beach, which winds Jessica up because apparently he's supposed to be at her beck and call at all times, even though she's off dry humping Tom McKay every other night. She interrupts DeeDee's lesson with Bill, by swishing out to them in her "bronze wet-look bikini" (which is either a continuity error, as she bought a bronze, wet-look one piece in Secrets, or she has TWO bronze wet-look swimsuits. Which wouldn't surprise me in the least, it being Jessica Wakefield and all) and being all flirty so that DeeDee runs off crying.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is sad because Sexy Patsy turned up at the beach and Todd went swimming with her and now she's super jealous because she thinks Todd wants to bang his ex-girlfriend. She also runs off crying, but meets Enid Rollins in the car park, along with Olivia Davidson and some bird called Lois Waller. I'm only really including this bit because of the appearance of this line:

"Lois Waller made her a little uncomfortable - always trying so hard to impress people, to be in the centre of things."

Which is a bit fucking rich, considering her twin is the kind of person who quite literally stops a pool party later on in the book so everyone will watch her dive into the water. Shut up Liz.

Jessica continues to ladycock-block DeeDee, practically jumping in front of her every time Bill talks to her, for no reason other than to keep him for herself even though she doesn't actually want him. She's such a genuinely terrible person. Bill is infuriatingly oblivious to her manipulations and treats DeeDee like shit, abandoning her every time Jessica bats her trampy eyelashes at him. Jessica invites the drama crowd over to her house for a pool party after rehearsal one evening, but makes it sound like it'll just be her and Bill so he'll bail on his plans to go surfing with DeeDee. Unsurprisingly, he ends up miserable when Jessica spends the evening getting felt up by Tom.

Elizabeth arrives home from the library, to find her dad in the living room while everyone is out in the back garden by the pool.

"Elizabeth was struck, as she often was, by how athletic her father looked for someone who spent so much of his time at a desk poring over legal briefs."

Stop checking your father out Liz, you weirdo.

Anyway, she gets into her "striped two-piece" and heads out to the pool to meet Todd, who is already there. But UH OH, he's leaning over Sexy Patsy, who is lying on her stomach with the back of her bikini top undone like some kind of whore, while he slowly rubs suntan lotion on her back. NOT COOL TODD. Elizabeth runs off to her room all upset and Todd doesn't know what the hell is going on, because apparently there's nothing wrong with massaging lotion onto your half naked ex-girlfriend. Jessica comes up to the room to see what's wrong, and when Elizabeth tells her she thinks there's something going on between Todd and Patsy, instead of consoling her like a NORMAL NON PSYCHOTIC PERSON, Jessica says "now that you mention it, I have noticed Todd spending a lot of time with Patsy at rehearsals", because she feels like Todd takes up too much of her sister's time. What the actual fuck? I looked up the characteristics of what makes a person a sociopath, and guess what? ALL THE TRAITS APPLY TO JESSICA.

This is actually one of the best book covers in the entire Sweet Valley High series. Jessica looks like a soccer mom who hasn't realised that her pool boy plaything prefers to have sex with dudes.

So it turns out that DeeDee's father is some big shot Hollywood agent and after seeing a rehearsal of the play, has chosen someone who he thinks has real talent, but won't reveal who until the end of the week, on opening night. Naturally, Jessica assumes it's her and actually stops torturing Bill for a while as she's too busy being unbearably smug about her supposed film star future. So when Bill asks her if she'd like to go to the cast party with him on opening night, she turns him down and suggests he ask DeeDee instead, as she's got better things to do now than dangle her vagina in front of some surfer dude.

That evening, DeeDee and Bill are out surfing, because apparently DeeDee is now good enough to enter the Women's Junior Surfing Championship after a few lessons and she needs to practice for the competition. But Bill is so busy feeling sorry for himself after being rejected by Jessica that he doesn't notice when DeeDee enters a wave a few seconds too late and gets pulled underwater. When he eventually spots her floating face-down in the water, he springs into action, bringing her back to the shore and giving her CPR. While he's giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he suddenly realises how pretty she is, which is kind of an odd place for someone's mind to go when the person in front of them is half dead.

DeeDee comes to, but instead of calling an ambulance, or taking her to A&E, seeing as y'know, SHE PROBABLY HAS A CONCUSSION, Bill realises that he's actually crazy about her so they start shifting in the sand, because going to the hospital is for quitters. Also, every time Bill has some manner of emotional upheaval in this book, his feelings are described with a hilariously heavy handed sea-related metaphor.

"When he kissed her it was as natural as a wave breaking."

"Jessica's appearance was like a wave knocking him over."

"Being in love was a lot like getting wiped out by a wave, he thought."

"The feeling must have been there all along, tugging at him like an undertow beneath the calm surface of their friendship."

"He suddenly felt as if he was the one who was drowning."

HE LIKES SURFING, YOU SEE.

Meanwhile, Liz has been moping around over Todd instead of actually talking to him, ever since the suntan lotion/naked back fiasco and subsequently seeing Todd with his arms around Patsy in school. Opening night of Splendor in the Grass eventually arrives and the play gets a standing ovation, while Jessica blows kisses to the adoring crowd like the insufferable diva she is, convinced that she's about to be discovered as an actress. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that Bill is the one that DeeDee's father has his Hollywood agent eye on, so she ditches Tom McKay like yesterday's jam, in order to hop on Bill's movie star coattails. DeeDee runs off crying when Jessica wedges herself between her and Bill and starts cooing and purring at him, not letting him get a word in edgeways when he really should be telling her to go fuck herself.

DeeDee meets Roger Barrett ouside while she's crying her face off, who comiserates with her as he's in love with Lila Fowler but he's all poor and nerdy so he doesn't stand a chance. They decide to go along to the cast party together, even though they're both miserable. Elizabeth and Jessica arrive at Lila's mansion for the party, but Elizabeth runs off crying (there's an inordinate amount of running off crying in this book) when she sees Sexy Patsy. While she's outside crying, Todd appears and demands to know what the hell is going on with her. He explains that he had his arms around Patsy that day in school because her French boyfriend had dumped her and he was just comforting her. They make up and exchange I-love-yous. Aww. I guess.

Inside at the party, Jessica is almost sitting on Bill's lap and probably giving herself friction burns from all the rubbing up against him she's doing. When DeeDee arrives with Roger, Bill jumps up and runs over to her, spilling his ginger ale on Jessica (ha! Fuck you Jess). Anyway, Bill finally straps on a pair and tells Jessica he's with DeeDee now. So Jessica runs off crying. And her Plan B boy Tom is now hooking up with Sexy Patsy. Everybody else is happy, so yay!

Notable outfit:
The appearance of Jessica's wet-look bronze bikini might have taken this honour, only it already did in Secrets, and anyway Patsy's totally sophisticated Parisian wardrobe wins out.

"She looked stunning in a low-cut halter-top jumpsuit made of some shimmery, peach coloured fabric."

YES. SHINY JUMPSUIT BONUS.

Things I counted:
Number of pages: 134
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 4
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 7
Amount of times people blush: 24 (TWENTY FOUR. For realsies.)

Shake Your Whammy Grammy Funky Song

While scrolling through all the galleries and slideshows of BAFTAs and Grammys dresses, I found myself getting increasingly annoyed with how anyone that showed a bit of personality or divilment in their choice of attire was relegated to the Worst Dressed lists. Balls to that, says I.

The endless shots of black dresses at the BAFTAs quite frankly bored the tits off me (apart from Helen Mirren and her deadly pink hair, obviously), so I've decided to show some love to my favourite gúnas of the Grammys, all have which have appeared on the Worst Dressed lists.


I think Florence Welch looked fucking mighty in her slinky, shiny, spiky jewel-green dress. Like a sexy stegosaurus. And I love a bird with a big nose, being one myself.


Estonian singer and songwriter Kerli has been given a right rough time of it, with fashion writers sniffily deriding her makeup and devil horns, placing her as the star of their Worst Dressed or "What were they thinking?" style of lineup. I think she looks absolutely balls out brilliant. She describes herself as "bubblegum goth" and the fact that her bag looks like it might be a turtle of some description only further endears her to me.


Kimbra, of plinky-plonky earworm "Somebody That I Used To Know" fame has also been scornfully dismissed with lines like "New Zealand singer Kimbra wore a bizarre netted number on the red carpet" and "Kimbra looked like she was wearing a dancing costume and the dress had way too much going on. She certainly stood out, but for all the wrong reasons!" HAHAHA YOU'RE HILARIOUS, FASHION WRITER LADY. In my opinion, Kimbra looked bloody marvellous, like a sparkly woodland fairy that's scandalising the forest by becoming a showgirl. Also, she looked so genuinely happy and excited on the night, it just seems mean to be a jerk about someone so endearing. YOU GO KIMBRA.

Also, as an aside, does anyone else think it sounds odd when fashion writers go on about how someone's makeup "could have used a red lip", as if they only have one? Like, you wouldn't say someone was "rocking a stylish black pant", or "looked amazing in a stripey sock". So yeah. Stop that.

Quelque Chose #20

Disneyland's backstage cafeteria for park staff in 1961. I love this photo. Sure where else would Snow White, an astronaut, Goofy and a cowboy grab some lunch?

(via)

Down in Dungarvan

Towards the end of last year, I took part in an exhibition organised by my good friend Noeleen called Brief Exchange. Well, it's back! The second show is an online only affair and the results have all been added to the Brief Exchange website for all to peruse.

This time around, I was given the following brief:

On his album 'Born in the USA' Bruce Springsteen sings about 'My Hometown'. Love it or hate it we all have one. Design / illustrate or photograph a poster inspired by your hometown.

I have to admit, I was pretty stumped on this one for quite some time, but finally thought of an angle I was happy with when there was a week to go until the deadline, just like the last time around. Because I'll never learn.

Anyway. The angle was zombies, because, yes, I know, I never shut up about them. So I decided to put my knowledge of my hometown to good use and came up with a survival guide to Dungarvan in the case of a zombie attack.

Clickedy click to enlarge

Dungarvan is one of those places that has a ridiculous number of chemists for the size of town it is. There are nine, to be exact and eight of them are all within spitting distance of each other, so I worked that into the poster by simply marking out where they were on a map of the town centre, along with other places to scavenge supplies from during the zombie apocalypse.


There's a 12th century shell keep called King John's Castle down by the quay in Dungarvan, so I figured it'd be an ideal place to hole up in reasonable safety from the undead, what with the big ass stone walls enclosing an 18th century barracks and all.  


Finally, seeing as it's wise to have an escape plan in case everything goes to shit, the nearby Cunnigar seemed like a good route to the nearby and less populated countryside. Also this way I could include a zombie warning sign in Irish for the craic.


So that was my submission for the second Brief Exchange show. The other posters and the briefs that they're based on are all on the website (click here to view them) and there's some truly excellent design going on over there.

Look out for the poster that came out of the brief I submitted, where I asked the designer to create a page of a helpful guide book for time travelling tourists. It's awesome.

Hello Pretty

While watching Tangled and The Princess and the Frog over Christmas, I was reminded of how much I flipping love Disney animation, Disney films and indeed, Disney princesses. Look at them! They're so pretty! With their huge swishy dresses and their completely unachievable hair!


Princesses are big business for Disney, but their world is a slightly odd and very carefully controlled one. For example, whenever they're pictured together, they never acknowledge each other or make eye contact. Apparently Roy Disney was against the idea of marketing the characters outside of their original stories, but went ahead with it on the condition that the princesses weren't aware of each other. So when they appear in a lineup, like the one above, they're all existing in their separate princess dimensions, like a whole bunch of parallel storybook universes all squished together.

Although a new cartoon for the Disney Channel, called Sofia the First, is set to blow a giant hole through the individual princess bubbles, as Ariel, Aurora and Cinderella are set to appear in the series. We can only hope that they arrive in a glittery pink TARDIS.


Also, Giselle from Enchanted was originally supposed to become part of the official princess marketing juggernaut, but Disney decided against it as it turned out that they were going to have to pay royalties to Amy Adams for using her likeness. And Disney don't pay for no princesses.


A lot has been said about what questionable role models the princesses can be, with the exception of Mulan, or maybe Tiana seeing as she's the first princess to run her own business, but from an entirely aesthetic point of view, they're bloody gorgeous pieces of artwork. They're beautifully drawn and instantly recognisable, and when this is the case I'm always intrigued as to where the inspiration for a character's image might have come from.


In Snow White's case, the lead animator for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was Grim Natwick, who previously designed Betty Boop for Fleischer Studios. Both characters share the short black hair and high pitched voices that would have been the fashionable feminine ideals for women in the 1930s. When you compare Snow White's hair and her relatively flat chest to the other princesses, with their long tumbling locks and nicely proportioned racks, she's actually something of a flapper girl.


When the character of Ariel was being developed for The Little Mermaid in the 1980s, the animators wanted to come up with a princess that would endure, like the ones that came before her, but also wanted her to be relatable to modern girls. An actress called Sherri Stoner was used as the live action model for Ariel, while her features were based on an array of different actresses - one of which was a young Alyssa Milano - in order to get the Eighties ideal of a pretty teenager with fashionable hair right.


At the time, Ariel was the first Disney princess in almost twenty years, so the animators paid tribute to her three predecessors by taking elements of their famous dresses and mashing them together in a pink Frankengown for her.


When it came to designing the character of Belle, Disney wanted her to be European-looking (whatever that means) and based her rounded features on Audrey Hepburn. Her famous yellow dress was directly inspired by a royal gown that Audrey wore in Roman Holiday.

I love it when Disney princesses are cleverly dropped into popular culture, and one of my favourite quotes from 30 Rock is the one where the inimitable Jenna makes a previously unnoticed point about the royal ladies.


One of the best things I've seen online in quite some time is the Pocket Princesses series by the insanely talented US artist Amy Mebberson. The series of comic strips feature the princesses all living together and the various domestic spats and shenanigans that a house filled with such big and oftentimes ridiculous personalities would bring about. She manages to nail each character's traits both perfectly and hilariously and they're the most adorable squabbles this side of a row between Hello Kitty and Boo.

Mérida from Brave will be joining the official Disney Princess group later this year, and the Pocket Princesses take on her introduction to the group is just deadly. The whole series of brilliant illustrations are on Mebberson's Tumblr, which I highly recommend trawling through. Click to enlarge the images below so you can fully appreciate just how clever and gorgeously drawn they are.


And finally, last year Lindsay Lohan hosted an episode of SNL which gave us the amazing Real Housewives of Disney sketch. Kristen Wiig's drunk-as-fuck Cinderella is a thing of beauty and the bitchy Prince Charming very nearly steals the show entirely.



Gold stars all round.

Ain't No Party Like a Womb Patrol Party, Cos a Womb Patrol Party is Forgettable

Well it's been an eventful week of Oireachtas Committee hearings on the topic of legislating for abortion. Not least because of Caroline Simons and her remarkable memory lapse.


When asked by a Fine Gael TD about her involvement in the hilarious anti-choice EWTN video, she replied:

“In relation to EWTN. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry I can’t help you with that one”.

Not exactly the answer anyone was expecting, seeing as, y'know, she was IN IT.


When asked again, after it was pointed out to her that she's in the bloody thing, she said:

"I was not aware I was on EWTN."

What the hell people, can't poor Caroline was just stand around in a room, minding her own business, talking about LITERAL tsunamis of death and the like without being filmed by right wing Catholic TV stations? HOW RUDE.


Later on Twitter, she clarified things.


Ah, see? She just DIDN'T KNOW which ludicrous anti-choice video it was. I mean, she DID say earlier in front of the Oireachtas Committee that she was not aware she was on EWTN, so it's not like she was on an hour long episode of a show on that very channel in April of last year, being interviewed by a friar who thinks that some victims of clerical abuse tricked those poor priests into fucking them. 


No wait, hang on. That's EXACTLY what happened.

Not only was she on the network, she also made her feeling about the TFMR (Terminations For Medical Reasons) group pretty clear, stating how "unusual" it was that they decided to go public with their stories of having to travel to England for abortions, after discovering that their babies wouldn't survive outside the womb.

"They got huge publicity, huge publicity. Our most watched prime time television programme last Friday night is called the Late Late Show. Those four women, I think maybe three of them were on last week, there was nobody on to counter what they had to say."

Imagine the temerity of the show's producers not to have the usual anti-choice Iona Institute/Life Institute loonbag there to tell these women how wrong they were while they told their utterly heartbreaking stories?

I mean, THE CHEEK.

Quelque Chose #19

Did you know that Veronica Lake, possessor of amazing hair and incredible face was only 4'11 tall? I only discovered it myself the other day, on the excellent Sibling of Daedalus blog. Look at how teeny tiny she was compared to 5'5 actresses Paulette Goddard and Dorothy Lamour.

via

You could put her in your pocket!

Meet Ireland's Womb Patrol

Now that the Government has finally decided to, y'know, not let women die and actually legislate for the X Case already - a step in the right direction, but still a very very small one - the anti-choicers are clutching their pearls, Photoshopping festive hats onto ultrasound scans and incorrectly using semi-colons with wanton abandon.

There's also an anti-choice ad doing the rounds online as a reaction to the Government getting the hell on with things that were meant to happen twenty fucking years ago. It turns out to be something of an endurance test as I only lasted forty seconds the first time I tried to watch it, having been scared off by the appearance of John Waters and his unwavering concern for my uterus. It's actually impossible to watch it and not burst out laughing, especially when Bernadette Smyth makes her appearance.


Oh Bernadette. With this giant furry hat you are really spoiling us. Also, YOU'RE INDOORS. YOU DO NOT REQUIRE A FLUFFY HAT. Perhaps the flowery wallpaper has tricked her into thinking she's in a meadow and maybe that's why she sounds like she's about to start crying.

The video progresses like the grimmest game of Guess Who you've ever played in your life, with Kathy Sinnott, David Quinn and Caroline Simons popping up one after the other and lying their asses off.

I'm not sure if there's a single truthful sentence in the entire thing. Here are some of the highlights:


Firstly, we have Kathy Sinnott wringing her hands while inexplicably standing in a manky, muddy field, without a coat or even a scarf on. You'd think Bernadette would at least give her a loan of her hat. According to Kathy:

"Referendum after referendum has demonstrated the pro-life position of the Irish people."

Er, no actually. Referendum after referendum has seen the Irish people support legislation for abortion in cases where the mother's life is at risk. You know, like reasonable people who don't hate women.


Caroline Simons then chimes in with some alarming meteorological news.

"In recent times, there has literally been a tsunami hitting Ireland."

HOLD THE PHONE. THERE'S BEEN A TSUNAMI, A LITERAL TSUNAMI AND NONE OF US NOTICED. DAMMIT JEAN BYRNE, WHY DIDN'T YOU WARN US?


But it's ok! Here's John Waters to explain everything!

"A tsunami of a culture of death." 

Oh. I see. Although surely a "culture of death" is one where we let mothers die, instead of allowing them a life saving medical procedure, but hey whatever.

The Caroline and John double act also give us this:

Caroline: "Savita Halappanavar, who died of septicaemia following a miscarraige."

Immediately followed by:  

John: "We won't know exactly what happened to Savita, until we hear from the the various inquiries."

Hey John, just ask Caroline! It seems like she knows all about it. She must have been in the room at the time with Savita and Praveen and no one noticed.


Next up, it's aspiring rapper Ide Nic Mhathuna, or Ide Nic Mhathunaz as she's known on the hip-hop circuit. There's not one, but two typos in her little caption, as Youth Defence is spelled the American way instead of the way it's spelled on their own goddamn website.


We also have Patrick McCrystal running away with the trophy for Creepiest Man IN THE WORLD. (As well as abortions, he also hates vaccines, contraception and gay people. Sound.) I realise that his expression in that screenshot is a bit unsettling, but no matter how hard I tried to find one, there literally wasn't a moment where he didn't look like he was seconds away from a strangle-wank. Just try to listen to how he says "perfect storm" without shuddering. He also provides us with the best line of the video:

"This battle can only be won if we are on our knees."

It's like the worst house party ever. And Kathy Sinnott standing in a field in Cork.

Sweet Valley High Revisited - Dear Sister

Ok, so you know how every Sweet Valley High book is brilliant in its own way, but there are some that are just that bit more amazing and ridiculously fun than the others? Well, this is one of them. It might as well be called Dear Jackpot.

Sweet Valley High #7: Dear Sister


So, the book opens with Elizabeth still in hospital, in a coma and Jessica at her bedside pleading with her to wake up. In case we've forgotten, we're immediately reminded how goddamn hot the twins are, as page one informs us that they're "gloriously attractive". Thanks guys. By the time we've gotten halfway through page two (HALFWAY), one or the other has been described as "beautiful", "vibrant", "lively", "vivacious" and a "fresh, youthful beauty". It's actually sort of impressive how much they've crammed in there. Anyway, Jessica is startled by a hand on her shoulder, but it's ok! It's just the most inappropriate doctor IN THE WORLD.

"Miss Wakefield?"
"Yes."
"I could see the resemblance. You're both beautiful."

That's right, this doctor greets sixteen year olds by telling them how hot they are. He's Elizabeth's neurosurgeon and his conversation with Jessica is just solid fucking gold. They have a chat about Elizabeth's condition, Jessica gets a bit upset about the whole thing and over the course of their conversation he does the following hilariously overfamiliar things, considering he's JUST MET HER:

"The man stooped so his face was on a level with hers."

"She felt strong hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently but insistently."

"Suddenly Dr. Edwards's hands were cupping her face, forcing her to look up."

Fucking hell, put your pants back on, Doc. 

Anyway, Elizabeth wakes up from her coma and starts acting like a spoiled little bitch. She immediately demands a makeover, gets in a huff over her hospital gown not being sexy enough and flirts her arse off with the doctors, all while being really dismissive and mean to Todd. She basically turns into Jessica. When she gets out of hospital and returns home, Todd comes by to see her but she instructs Jessica to fob him off and tell him she's too tired for visitors. Jessica pulls Todd into the kitchen and lies to him, saying that Elizabeth can't have any visitors until she goes back to school and reassures him that once she's back in class everything will go back to normal. It's one of my favourite parts of this book.

"You know how much she likes school. She'll probably have all the work made up and a dozen stories written for The Oracle before I finish that one stupid book report on Moby Dick. I mean, Todd, who really cares about whales?" Jessica asked in annoyance.

Todd did, but he let the comment slide by.

Awwww! TODDDDD! He CARES about WHALES you guys. I love that line so goddamn much.

So, Elizabeth returns to school and Jessica drives them there, parking the car "with her usual flourish". I don't know how exactly parking with a flourish works (other than Ace Ventura barrell-rolling his safari jeep into the car park in When Nature Calls, obviously. LLLIKE A GLOVE), but clearly it's something else that the Wakefields are amazing at.

All week at school, people keep confusing Elizabeth for Jessica and when the twins are meant to get the house ready for a pool party they're throwing at the weekend, Elizabeth lands Jessica with all the work as she flits around the mall. While Jessica is sorting out the food for the party, she starts talking to herself in a slightly alarming manner.

"Listen, Jessica Wakefield," she lectured herself, "haven't you ever ducked out on work and left Elizabeth to do it?"

"Now, don't start creating a humungous, imaginary crisis over nothing," she cautioned herself aloud.

"Stop it," Jessica commanded herself. "If you don't make that dip, the kids will have to eat powdered soup mix." She giggled and kept working.

She's like one of those demented bitches off Sunset Beach.

The party is a hit and everyone has a great time, except for Jessica, because Elizabeth is hogging the limelight and for Todd, because Elizabeth is practically rubbing herself all over Ken Matthews like a cat in heat. When Jessica gets suckered into cleaning up after the party alone, it begins to dawn on her that Elizabeth has actually turned into Jessica, prompting an existential crisis of sorts. "If she's Jessica, she agonised, then who am I?"

Over the next week or so, Liz begins to do badly at school as she's too busy being on the phone to random boys to do any studying. Ned and Alice then announce at dinner that the Percys - whoever the fuck they are - are going to a computer conference in Europe (fancy!) and the Wakefields are looking after their twin twelve year old girls while they're away.

"The twins were fragile, dark-haired girls with large brown eyes set in small solemn faces. They were wearing identical gray jumpers, and long-sleeved white blouses, and they were clutching identical black flute cases."

Well don't they sound just a tad familiar.

Oh hai there.

As soon as the Percy twins arrive, Ned and Alice fuck off to "an evening of bridge", which I hope is code for something else, otherwise they're the most boring people IN THE WORLD. Jessica has a date with Danny Stauffer that night though, so while she's planning to skip out on babysitting and leave Liz looking after the twins, Liz beats her to it and is making her exit while Jessica is still on the phone to Danny, leaving Jessica with no option but to bring the girls on her date with him at the drive-in.

Back at school, Elizabeth keeps blowing Enid off and takes a sudden interest in the lame sorority the twins are in, prompting Jessica to talk to herself some more. Enid comes over, wondering who the hell Jessica is talking to, and asks her if Liz is mad at her.

"Not that I know of." Jessica wondered why she didn't tell Enid the truth. Elizabeth didn't want to have anything to do with her. Jessica would have enjoyed telling her to get lost a month ago. For some reason, she felt sympathy for Enid now.

I love how normal human emotions don't compute with Jessica.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is swanning around school failing everything, hitting on everyone's boyfriend, and sweet-talking Winston Egbert into doing her homework for her. Gasp! When she's late handing in her Eyes and Ears column, Mr. Collins asks how she is. Cue hilarity.

"Everybody asks me that," she snapped. "Elizabeth, I hope you know that I'm a friend, not only a teacher and an adviser. And friends don't dish out a lot of applesauce to each other."

Oh Mr. Collins. You crazy motherfucker. I actually had to look up the word applesauce online, as I've never in my life heard it used in any context other than sauce made of apples. Turns out it's slang from THE TWENTIES. THE TWENTIES, MR. COLLINS. He probably thinks journalists wear hats with a little card stuck in it that reads "PRESS" and that the talkies will never catch on.

We then find out that since Elizabeth has been giving Todd the brush off, he's lost his mad skillz on the basketball court and that his nickname is "Whizzer" Wilkins. Amazing. This book just DOES NOT let up. Anyway, Todd's coach then has a talk with him about Liz, because every staff member at this school is completely over-involved in their students lives.

Elizabeth proceeds to get fired from the school paper for writing a bitchy item to split Ken Matthews up from his girlfriend (Mr. Collins says "applesauce" again! I LOVE IT!) and then zips around town driving Max Dellon's motorbike, much to Jessica's horror. Ned and Alice, after agreeing to take care of someone else's kids for a while, appear to have decided to never be around when they actually need them and land Jessica with driving the girls to a flute audition at the weekend. Jessica has a date at the beach with Danny though, so she ends up being caught speeding on her way back from the audition and when she does get to the beach, she sees Danny with his arm around some tramp in a white bikini. Angry and frustrated - with the creepy twins in the back seat - she then backs into another car and cries her face off.

Jessica haz a sad. And terrible taste in picture frames.

A few days later, Lila Fowler is throwing a party at her house, but not just any old party, a combination of a costume party and a "pick-up party", which apparently means a license to whore your way through the night. "Everybody came single and picked up whomever they could." The Wakefields go to the party dressed as - wait for it - MATADORS. Excellent. Elizabeth ends up leaving the party with Bruce Patman, who can't believe his luck that he's getting to feel up the twin who usually hates him, and plies her with wine down at the beach. Jessica sends SuperTodd after them, he punches Bruce and takes drunk Liz home.

Ned and Alice eventually find out about Jessica's speeding ticket and the dent in the car, but the Percy twins come to the rescue and lie for Jessica, saving her ass. When Jessica apologises to the twins for shouting at them all the time, they say it's fine and that they've never had so much fun.

"Boy, going to a real drive-in! With making out and everything."

Jessica dry-humped Danny at the drive-in with two twelve year olds in the backseat. She's a class act. AND AN OLD TIMEY GANGSTER! Just like Bruce in Power Play!

"Listen, you two," Jessica said, "cool it, see? You weren't supposed to be there."

I'm beginning to wonder if there's a wormhole to 1920s Sweet Valley somewhere in the town.

Todd's surfer friend Bill Chase, who has apparently been "half in love" with Elizabeth for ages, asks her out to some beach club dance on Saturday night, which she agrees to while being all sexy-like and just stopping short of licking his face. Later that day though, she also arranges to go on a date with Bruce at his family's beach house.

When Bill turns up at Casa Wakefield, Liz is already gone. So Jessica decides that her newly-trampy sister shouldn't get to have all the fun, and in a return to her gloriously sociopathic old self, she pretends to be Liz and goes on the date with Bill, just to fuck with his head because he turned her down when she asked him some dance ages ago. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is at the beach house having her boobs groped by Bruce, who appears to be seconds away from date-raping her. He leaves her alone in a bedroom while he gets more wine from downstairs, but Liz slips and whacks her head off a table. Suddenly she has no idea where she is and can't remember anything after the hospital.

When Bruce comes back, Elizabeth tries to leave, but he blocks the doorway and pretty much says she's not going anywhere until he gets the ride. He grabs her and forces her to kiss him and suddenly he turns into old timey gangster Bruce again! Yesss!

Roughly he seized her wrists, and she was helpless. "I've got real strong hands Liz," he said. "From tennis, see?"

Anyway, Liz bites him when he kisses her again and runs out onto the beach, into the arms of Todd who just happened to be moping around outside. He quickly cops that Liz is back to her old boring self and she's all delighted to see him now. Then he shifts the face off her with "a deep, long kiss that she wished would last forever." Hooray!

Notable outfit:
There was so much other amazing stuff happening in this book, like applesauce, that there weren't really any particularly brilliant outfits being described. Apart from the matador costumes. Although when Jessica decided to trick Bill by dressing as Elizabeth, she did so in the following:

"She was wearing Elizabeth's flowered peasant skirt and ruffled blouse."

Nice.

Things I counted:
Number of pages: 150
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 6
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 8
Amount of times the twins are called "beautiful": 12

Heads Will Roll

There's this song that's been stuck in my head since I heard it. Thankfully this isn't like the times when you get a Harvey Norman jingle or a One Direction song stuck in your head and you start to lose the will to live. It's quite the opposite, I'm more than happy to have this song lodged in my brain. In fact, I think I've forgotten the words to one of the verses of Jump Around, in order to make room for it. The fact that I'm ok with that speaks volumes about how good it is.

If this typeface was a person I'd shift the face off it and make it a lasagna for dinner.

The song in question is Queen Herod Will Find You, by Queen Herod. As awesome as the name is, the story of the song is pretty much exactly the sort of thing I love.

"This tells the story of Queen Herod, a giant, murderous witch who lives in an isolated castle in the forest. She gathers the children from their homes and eats them. But does she eat them because she's lonely, or is she lonely because she eats them?"

Oooh! And look at the beautiful, creepy video!



Queen Herod is the lovely, jangly, bitey alter ego of Dublin artist and musician Holly Pereira. Her debut EP can be listened to here (it's really very good, I highly recommend you listen) and is being launched in Whelans on the 13th December.

Queen Herod is on Facebook too. You'd better go say hello, because she WILL find you, you know.

The Life Institute AKA Team America

Ah the Life Institute. One of the many anti-choice organisations to come snaking out of 60a Capel Street, along with Youth Defence, the Mother and Child Campaign, prolifeinfo.ie and the Pro-Life Alliance. That building is like a big anti-choice Hydra. I swear if you chopped off one of its lying heads another one would spring into place screaming "LOOK AT THE BABY!"

So when Geoff offered to send me the stats he had collected about their @lifeinstitute Twitter account, I said why yes please kind sir. I'm not one to turn down an opportunity to snark on one of Ireland's infinitely annoying extremist anti-choice groups, especially when they're claiming to represent the views of the majority of people in this country and have taken to harassing TDs by bombarding them with phonecalls.

Here's what I learned about their Twitter fanbase.


Well now, would you look at that? It would appear that Irish accounts aren't all that interested in what the Life Institute have to say, and they themselves aren't particularly pushed about what Irish people have to say, either.

Look what happens when you take the descriptions of their followers and turn them into a Wordle.

Click to enlarge, unless you have bionic eyes.

My. What a diverse and eclectic mix of people with such varying interests.


I'd also like to show you a few of the descriptions themselves:

Born in the USA! The best things in life: Adonai, family, friends, milk chocolate, jet planes and a 9mm semi automatic. 

Constitution lovin, NRA, Conservative, sarcastic, Hillbilly, Redneck, Oath Keeper, Military loving, father, grandfather, dirty ol' man. 

 #Christian #PROLIFE #ISRAEL #NRA #Glock #Texas #USMC 85-95. #Indiana #IARNG 97-01. #Texan by birth #Marine by choice. #infidel. Follow or RT ≠ Endorsement 

Wow. I don't even have to do anything to make fun of them. Pro-life AND pro-gun. 

And just because it's hilarious, here's a recent tweet from one of the accounts followed by the Life Institute:

Peacefully grant the State of North Carolina to withdraw from the United States and create its own NEW government http://t.co/fd81ismG


You guys.