The Mayhem Papers

Calcutta (The Damn Bell Doors) – PELUSSJE tandooRMX Preview – Out soon on MMAN Recordings! by Pelussje

…of a minor existential crisis is actually using the term correctly.

Hooray for a solid education

A conversation at dinner tonight:

Me: Zoë, is mommy the boss of me?

Z paused for a moment and very thoughtfully said, “No, Daddy.  You’re the boss”

She was rewarded with candy

My dear cousin-in-law (arch nemesis) Mike made a comment today that he was having a KMFDM marathon.  This reminded me of a period of my life around the age 20-22 when I subsequently lost all my KMFDM t-shirts.  By “lost”, I mean “was robbed”.

A little back story here:

KMFDM is a German industrial band.  They were formed in the mid 80′s and have since done something like 16 studio albums, with “Juke Joint Jezebel” being their most widely heard song, showing up on the big screen in both Bad Boys (featuring Martin Lawrence and The Fresh Prince) and Mortal Kombat (featuring Sub-Zero and Scorpion).  I listened to them quite a bit during the 90s.

The thing about KMFDM is that they had EXCELLENT album covers.

my favorite design, now probably in the bottom drawer of some harlot's dresser

I thought these designs were superb and had a pretty good collection of black t-shirts featuring said artwork.  Of course, the girls I dated also thought they were pretty cool.  I noticed that slowly but surely my shirts would eventually end up in the clutches of these thieving women.  By the time I hit 22, my collection had gone from maybe 6-8 different KMFDM shirts to 0! Of course my friends all thought this was tremendously funny.  In fact, whenever they would see a girl wearing a KMFDM shirt they would ask them if they knew me.

A word of warning: UNLESS YOU ARE MARRIED TO THEM, DO NOT LET WOMEN BORROW YOUR FAVORITE SHIRTS!

That is all.

This reaction from Zoë pretty much justifies every annoying or troublesome thing my life. To be able to make someone so happy is priceless.

So with Apple and AT&T having issues with the iPhone pre-orders this morning, I decided to take a hop over to AT&T’s Facebook page and see if they had a statement.  I was rewarded with seeing this little gem of a post:

Unless you understand networking, don’t talk about it. Having worked with my old school for 2 years and taking classes on it for all 4, I think I know what I’m talking about. You all don’t. Less qq.

This totally cracked me up.  I really hope I never said anything when I was younger that sounded like this.  I know I said a lot of stupid stuff, but I think I’ve always had a pretty good handle on my relative level of experience.

For those of you not in the know, “qq” is an emoticon for “crying”.

Today I had the pleasure of visiting the small village of Blarney and the castle from which it gets its name. I caught a city bus about 2 blocks away from my hotel straight to Blarney.  The ride was only about 25 minutes.  Not too bad of a ride.  Blarney was a cute little village and it was a short walk over to the castle.

It was interesting to see how small the inside of the castle actually is.  It was very obvious that people were much shorter when it was built.  The climb up to the top of the castle was crazy.  An extremely narrow winding staircase.  My shoulders brushed each side the entire way up.

Once I got to the top, I leaned out backwards over the open air to “kiss the Blarney”.  I still can’t get the taste of stone off my lips.

Last night I checked in at the lovely  Brehon in Killarney.  A very nice hotel with very friendly staff.  When I bring Maryanne and the girls back to Ireland, this is definitely where we will stay.  Luckily I was able to get plenty of sleep.  Granted, the 30 hours of no sleep and a melatonin definitely helped.  I woke up, had a nice breakfast and met up with Richard Clancy of Killarney Guided Walks for a guided tour of Killarney National Park.  The interesting thing about this is he does this every day at 11.  During the summer he waits at the local bike shop and anyone who shows up can go along.  During the winter months, you need to call ahead.

We met up around 11:10 (it was actually 11:20, but according to Richard that is 11:10 in Irish time) and I climbed into the back with his 2 dogs.  As a side note, cars in Ireland tend to be of the smaller variety, so here I am wedged into the back seat of a car with his 2 lively dogs introducing themselves to me.  It was a pretty funny scene.

Richard proceeded to lead myself and a British lady by the name of Emma on a walk around the smaller of the 2 lakes in the park.  All the while, the 2 dogs ranged around us.  It was a great day for it, the sky was bright and clear and the air had just a little bit of a nip in it to keep you cool while walking.  The area actually reminded me a lot of the area around Mono Lake in CA.  It was fairly hilly with a good mix of flora, including a few Monterrey pines and oddly enough 3 palm trees.

This is roughly the path we took:

After hiking for about 4 hours, I strolled around the town of Killarney with a milkshake in hand.  It’s going to be an early night for me.  I’ve already had dinner and bethed and it’s only just now 10 minutes to 8.

Here are some pictures I took today.  Click on any of them to see full sized.

Not sure what tomorrow will bring.  I may drive the Ring of Kerry, or I might just take the southern route back to Cork.  Either way, it should be fun.

After an hour delay in Heathrow waiting for the flight crew to eat their lunch (I kid you not), I arrived in Cork around 4:30. Very tiny little airport. Fairly modern, but pretty small. After waiting a nervous 20 minutes for my bag come out, I picked up my rental car and was on my way. Unfortunately it was now around 5pm on a Friday, so I had a good bit of traffic to contend with.

The drive out was very nice. Unfortunately the setting sun made it a little tough to get a good sense for the colors around me, the scenery was very nice. I’ve checked into the Brehon hotel and have taken a shower so I feel human again. Now debating on taking a 15 minute walk up the road to find some dinner or just ordering room service.