Sex perversion boingboing

My weblog has no readers or virtually no readers. I became
a blogger a month of so ago. I write in my blog daily, submit my
posts to the appropiate directories, ping when required, read
Boingboing and check with Technorati, prowl the search engines,
seek and get help from the blogger forums. I have added incoming
and out going links, have introduced keywords into my text. I
have searched the web for help and fiddled about with HTML,
used buttons of every decription subscribed to Adsense.
I've done it all, I have done it my way and the Slashdot way.
I'm at my wits end.

I didn't always look this way, true I was always good looking, but
my hair used to be raven black. People, complete strangers would
stop me in the street and say "You've got beautifull hair" Women
would throw themselves at me just so they could run their fingers
throught it. It was my pride and joy, my crowning glory.
Until the blogging that is. In the last month I've lost sleep, got
indigestion and my hair has turned grey. All because of the lack
of attention my blog is receiving. So I was thinking. Why not fall
back on the old reliables. Sex, perversion and frontal nudity.
It might work. It really might bring in some readers.

Noise pollution

Every day the noise from the flat below me goes Boom,Boom,
Boom destroying my peace and quiet. The music, if that's what
I can call it is out and out pollution. There are plenty of
regulations to prohibit this nuisance but for someone like me
who is at the mercy of a private landlord there might as well
be no regulations. My health is suffering and the quality of
life for me has gone out the window. But of course I don't
matter. The law does not protect people of no property.
When I wake up in the morning I am acutely aware that I
am not valued in this society, indeed I'm conscious of it every
minute of the day. So I walk the streets for hours just to get
away from noise. Much of the time I cannot as much as eat.
Noise can have that effect, it can make you physically sick
and nauseous. There are noise abatement laws but they are
not there to protect me or my kind.
'Sorry to be sounding so miserable but its hard not to as
this is going on every single day and unfortuantly I have no
way out. My landlord could put me out on the street
tomorrow if I insisted he do something about it so it just
goes on and on and on.
I have no way out.

This other eden

If I had the money or if I were younger I would not
be here. I would be living in the most wonderfull country
on this planet. I mean England. I lived there for years from
my late teens onwards and even before that when still a
child my mother brought me there for holidays.
I wish I was there now. I can think of nothing finer
that to wake up every morning and find myself in Earls
Court or Fulham or Hammersmith or even Brixton where
my daughter lives. To go for a walk in Holland Park or
stroll around the shops in Knightsbridge and smell London
in the air. I only have one bad memory from there. I was
living in Shepherds Bush which is next door to Hammersmith
in south London and was sharing a flat with a fellow called
Bernard Roy Duggan. He was having company one night so
I decided to make myself scarce and went for a walk. At
some point during this walk I met a guy.....how I can't
remember but we got talking and we went for a drink. He
lived not to far away by bus so after the pub I went back
to his flat for coffee and a chat After being there for
a while I went to leave and that's when it all went sour.

Exactly what happened I will pass over but I did not get
out of the place until about five the next morning. He
was a violent man and for the time I spent there I was
terrified. I remember thinking that I was not going to get
out alive. He made it clear that he wanted my company
regardless how I felt about it.
When I did eventually leave I went home and wanted
to call the police but by that time I had no idea exactley
where he lived. It had been dark when I got to his place
and I had not really being paying attention to where he
lived so I just went home. In time I managed to forget
about the whole experience.
A couple of years later when I was back in Dublin I was
watching TV one night and the news was on. And out of
the blue his face came up on the screen. It was a report
about a man who had been arrested that day for murder
in London. But it wasn't just a regular murder.
His name was given as Denis Neilsen and he was charged
with the murder of something like sixteen young men.
Sometime after that I bought a book about him and I
couldn't help thinking that if things had been just a little
different I might have ended up like those poor souls.
You read about such people but you don't expect to
meet them in real life.

Car boot sale

For years I used to go to car boot sales. I was a market
trader and I would wander around flea markets or charity
shops looking for bargains to sell on my stall. I would come
back from these with paintings or antiques or just plain
brick-a-brack. It's an interesting way of life and I recently
started a blog about it called The Charity Shop Rambler
(there's a link on the left of this page) in which I hope to
tell all my car boot and flea market stories. But all the old
markets have been closed in Dublin and there are only
two car boot sales that I know of and they are not what
they used to be. And the days of picking up gems of one
sort or another are finished. People don't seem to get rid
of their old stuff any more.
And the same applies to charity shops. I still go around them
every day as I have nothing else to do but I rarely get
anything worthwhile. The last picture I got in that way was
a small print of James Joyce signed by Harry Kernoff which
I picked up in an Oxfam shop.
Now that the weather is improving I am going to get an
old bike an start checking out all these places. If nothing else
it will give me something to do and with a bike I can travel
further afield.

St. Stephens Green.

It's almost summer in Dublin.
St. Stephens Green. April 2006.
And as I upload this photo I am watching
Elvis Presley on stage in Las Vegas. Charlie
Hodges is handing him a bright blue scarf.
They are both young and look across the
stage at each other almost as if they were
lovers. Two young men in their prime
before things started to go wrong.
And all this is in the past like a house
that has been demolished and leveled
leaving just a memory of dead people
and dead lives.
"We'll never see their likes again" and
if someone should ask me what it was like
to live in those times I'll say that "giants
walked the land in those days".
And from time to time I'll go for a walk
and look at the flowers in Stephens Green.

Smoking with vermeer

I took a stroll down to the National Gallery today.
I go there once or twice a week as it is only a twenty minute
walk from where I live but I never fail to be amazed at how poor
some of the pictures look in comparison to how they are
presented in the catalogue. The above is one of the gems of
the collection in the gallery and to be quite honest it looks a
lot better in this reproduction than it does in real life. It's a lot
smaller than you would expect it to be and is rather dull and
even bland. But it's not just this one painting, there is a canvas
by Caravggio " The taking of Christ" which was discovered
recently in a church here in Dublin, which you imagine to
be gigantic but isn't. Walking around the gallery one is
constantly struck by the mediocrity of many of the works.
And you can't smoke. Now most people would say "so what"
but if your like me and a smoker then it's a bit of a drag
not to be able to sit down and have a smoke while viewing
the pictures.
I rarely bother looking into the room where 20th century
irish art is displayed as my favorite artist, Michael Kane
is not on display there...'plenty of Yeats who I am not at all
impressed with. There is however a piece by Mainie Jellett
one of whose guaches I am lucky enough to own.
Still, it's an agreeable way to spend the afternoon and it does
not cost anything and as you walk down to it you pass through
terraces of Georgian house for which Dublin is renowned.
But there is little 'great art' to be found and what is there is
a collection of 'all the old regulars' which makes for a dull
and unimaginative collection. But I think the real killer is
that there are no chances being taken here, it's conservative
in the worse sense.