Gumtree - Missed Connections, No Connections

One of my late night pursuits is having a wee giggle to myself about the poor lonely folk that write up on Gumtree Missed Connections. I always read the Belfast section, mostly because I'd like to see someone I know mentioned on there sometime but also because I'd maybe like to see some lonely sap looking for me. I would have a good giggle and show it to my girlfriend and we'd laugh and maybe send them a jokey email back telling them I wanted to meet them in a lonely part of town at night and have them lifted by the cops for stalking me.

This is very cruel? Isn't it?

No, it isn't.

Here's why.

You see most people on here are looking for these "stunning" people they see when they're limping all lonely about the city and they're too afraid to talk to them. You see if they went up and said something along the lines of "Hey baby you're so hot, sex me now. I like it wild!" then maybe they'd get a slap in the face, but maybe if they just struck up a conversation with them it might not be so bad. You see good-looking people don't spend their time on Gumtree hoping that someone is looking for them (except for me), they spend their time going out and meeting people. So you've little or no chance that they'll ever read your message, at most you've just gotten something off your chest.

The other problem is this, putting up these gushing messages about how you just have to meet this person makes you sound like a bed wetter.

With this in mind I've put my own sad wee post up (see if you can guess which one it is). And maybe if you're reading this in tears saying "but I'm too shy to speak to people", then consider this; If you do speak to someone and make a dick out of yourself they probably won't remember it for too long but at least you'll have met them (which is more than you'll get posting on Missed Connections).

Plus for cash I'll come along and tell them how muther frickin' fly ass cool you are (even if you're not!) and how at a party when I open a beer, I give one to you and whatever's left is for me (but let's not go overboard I have my own cool to keep).

You gotta have rain to have rainbows! (or Fairy Liquid)

Friday I was stranded out in Ormeau Park. It had drizzled a wee bit and I thought my nice £2.50 Save the Children (I have a social conscience) umbrella was enough to withstand any onslaught the weather might throw at me.

This was proved wrong the first time I opened it. Not by the weather but by the umbrella's eagerness to "BREAK THE MOULD" and fly off like a bad tribute to all the merry chimney sweeps in Dick the Dyke's Mary Poppins.

Then it pissed down, out of pure schadenfreude, and I was left huddling under a tree thinking if that thing I heard at school about not huddling under trees in lightening storms was true (it is - just in case you think I'm a reliable source and I'm disputing it [we were all told a lot of lies at school]) and thinking I should have got in that taxi that my girlfriend offered me a lift in.

Then it stopped and I saw this (see below)



And it reminded me that we see a lot of rain in Northern Ireland but not a lot of rainbows. And I immediately thought about a metaphor for the troubles but didn't write it down for lack of a pen.

I'm sure it lives on in the hearts of the people, and in the wind that smashes into the side of cavehill and carries many a lowly scoutmaster sordid dreams (oo er!) but I forget it, (it was something to do with George W Bush being a total mutherfucker and like totally being a dick, dude I'm like into peace and stuff and if you're not then you can totally go hang with all the racists I'm going to defeat when they hear what I have to say about them the stoopid gang of asswipe mutherfuckers).

Anyways. I remembered that you need a lot of rain to get rainbows but also that you had to have a dick, to have dick in your mouth, and off I walked back towards town hoping that there were still some skaters at custom house square to have a laugh at (only when they fell really badly - other than that they were slam dunkin da funk).

Review -Pink - Fun House

It might be obvious to some of you that I'm going to slate this song from the word go. It might seem like a cheap shot: Pink is a pop star (who acts like a rock star), this is the fourth single from her album (should have stopped at three), and some other reason I don't know. Feel free to feel that way because take a pop is exactly what I'm going to do. This song annoys me. Mostly because of the main lyric. "This used to be a fun house, but now it's full of evil clowns," I feel a dull ache in my balls when I hear this line and I think a ghost has just kneed me very hard (as hard as ghosts can) because I have let the inane line become something I am focusing on, instead of all the millions of other possibilities - hot faff or things I can steal.

Mostly it's because the lyric sounds like something that Pink had to change the original line to so it could recieve mainstream radio play. You know like Britney's latest Effort "If you seek amy" where she thought she was being smart until she had to go on TV shows all over the place with nice, innofensive, pish lyrics. (If I see Amy what? What Britney? What should I do?)

What annoys me more is that I start to try to make the lyrics make some kind of sense. I start to imagine this house where Pink used to have fun but now these "evil clowns" are wandering about the place making her feel uncomfortable (but not so much that she'd leave because the lyrics suggest she's still there despite them), where did these Clowns come from and why are they there? Why aren't they being funny like the clowns I loved at the circus as a kid? Maybe she's just trying to be cool like my mate at college who said he was scared of clowns because he'd heard Johnny Depp was scared of them? Why if they don't make Pink uncomfortable enough to leave does she feel the need to tell me about them in a song? Why Pink? Why? Anyway here's the pish tune itself, just to bug the rest of you. (BTW if any of you are dancing in front of your computers then up yours).

Searching for Prostitutes in Belfast

This is the latest video for Communist Defectors Will Be Shot. This marks a change for the group since it's our last track with Eugene Reilly. Meaning that now Communist Defectors Will Be Shot is just me. This is also the last of our collaborations with Karen Eliot (the other being The Great City of Ballymena).

How you enjoy it.



For anyone who's interested the video was shot entirely on my Samsung phone camera.

The Great City of Ballymena

I've Been Stuck in Ballymena a lot recently because I'm technically homeless. It's been fine in a lot of ways, mostly because I get to see a lot of my folks and at the start of the years I was working nights and the only time I got to see any of them was when my dad went into hospital, and even then I was walking around like a zombie.

Anyways, I thought I'd use that as a great excuse to show you my tribute to my hometown The Great City of Ballymena. It was a video I made for a song I did with my electronica group Communist Defectors Will Be Shot. It's named after the time IPJ called it that on the news. He should know better because he's the MLA for here and Ballymena is a bloody town. Regardless of what it says on that fucking roundabout (WELCOME TO THE CITY OF THE SEVEN TOWERS). It actually doesn't have seven towers either (any more).

Anyway, here's the vid. When I made it I thought the links were tenuous at best, now I'm not so sure there are any at all. Watch it and let me know if you see any.

The Adventures of Boring Tom - Part Two

One day Boring Tom went to the shop to buy crisps.

"Cheese and Onion again?" said the woman behind the counter.
"I think I might try a different flavor for a change," Boring Tom said. "What colour are Prawn Cocktail?"

"They're the pink ones."

"Pink?" said Boring Tom. "That's an astounding colour. I think I'll just stick with Cheese and Onion."



Artwork by Ryan O"Neill check more of his work out here.

Twilight - A Review

I was playing the good boyfriend the other night when my sweet honey pie said: "Let's watch twilight," and I said, "Aye okay then."

That's actually a bit of a lie. I was interested to see it. I know I'm not in the target audience (teenage girls) but I've always had a liking for the whole Vampire mythos and have enjoy the genre very much.

So down we sat to watch the Twilight! (or just Twilight, I've a habit of prefixing nouns with 'the').

Both of us had the best intentions but I was very happy when at about an hour in my girlfriend asked if I was enjoying the film as little as she was.

We kept watching anyway and talked as it progressed about what we thought was wrong with the film.

Firstly, the main female Bella is unremarkable as a person. Apart from Edward (the hot Vampire boy) not being able to read her thoughts (and he can read everyone elses) and he wants to drink her blood (but won't) there's no real substance to their relationship.

They have nothing really linking them except for the relationship itself, which is a thinly disguised metaphor for not having premarital sex.

Bella spends a lot of the film looking slightly startled (as you would if you found out you were dating someone who wanted to drink your blood - regardless of how much they say they won't actually do it).

She is rude to her friends. When she arrives new in town and doesn't know anyone. A few people at her new school become her friends (okay some of the guys want to diddle her but it's better than getting your deep wee head flushed down the bogs as is usually par for the course). She doesn't really give a fuck what they're at and when her and Edward go to the prom all her mates are happy to see her (even though they think she's dating a wanker) and wave hello. At which point Edward and Bella decide to fuck off without even speaking. How deep?

Edward in fact spends a lot of the film being deep and taking about five minutes of deep shaking to get a sentence out.

Late on in the film he introduces Bella to his family (the other vampires) and they all go and play baseball - like radical, cool, slamming funk baby, get down. The family have very little substance but since Twilight is the first in a franchise we can assume that later films will flesh them out (I'm sooooo witty), so for now we can let this go, although it's a bit frustrating to just have them all dumped on us all at once. It's like being left in a room full of people you don't know at a party to find that the only thing they talk about with any excitement about is Jane Austen novels (I think Jane Austen is shit you see).

All in all the film looks like like a marketing conspiracy involving Gap, John Frieda, Max Factor and the inbred society of America. Twilight is also a bit flat and non-descript as a title, the film would have been better named Hot Deep Teenage High School Vampire Love Movie I'm surprised my main man Snoop Dizzle didn't make an appearance in a jacuzzi wiv a bottle of fine Don Brizzle and some hoes, just to squeeze in whatever potential audience group still available to them.

Though I think if I was a cool teen (and at 28 I haven't been one in a while [there are some who'd say I never was one, but they'd sound funny saying it because of their broken jaws]) I'd probably not want to watch Twilight, I'd probably want to listen to Little Boots instead because I'd be more impressed by a role model who sounds like she heard a Goldfrapp album and said: "Hold on, I could do that."

And there's nothing wrong with that, because Goldfrapp suck anyway. Ellen Page even says so in Hard Candy and I'd trust her because she spends her time visiting paedophiles and convincing them to kill themselves (actually watch Hard Candy instead of Twilight).

So yeah, Twilight like totally sucks ass dude!



NB Anyone who had any doubt about me being a cool teen take a look at this. I was very cool (okay I was in my early twenties here but you can still see it) and deep too (I'd have made a great vampire).