Welcome Celbridge Analytica!

Warm enough today now all the same.  Got very close in the afternoon.  I had to take the cardigan off.  Busy enough, mind you.  Busload of young banjo players from Carrick-on-Suir and then, would you believe it, five minutes later, a busload of accordion-players from Carrick-on-Shannon and then a busload of Melodion players from Sikinos.  The racket they made!  Marvelous version of Por Aul Dicey Riley they all did!  Gave them a great appetite all the same.  The only things left in the shop when they were gone were two chamomile and gooseberry teabags and a Club Milk that looked like someone had slept on it.  I’ll have to do a big shop in the morning now to restock.

Ambrose has taken this whole “Futurizing the now building a better tomorrow today!” thing very seriously.  He comes up to me after they’ve all gone.  Says he has a venture for us.   Do you now? says I.  I do, says he, Celbridge Analytica, he announces, and holds up this piece of headed stationery.  What’s that? says I. a sex toy shop? I couldn’t be having any truck with the likes of that!  No, no, says he.  Data mining, says he.  What, like with computers and internets and the like? says I.  Not at all, this is artesenal, says he.  Go on so, says I.  Well, says he, we follow people around the Spar and see what they buy and what they pick up but don’t end up buying and then we put flyers through their letterboxes depending on what we notice.  Isn’t that a bit creepy? says I.  Àh sure they’re all living out loud in this town these days you have to get with it, says he.  You have to thrive to survive, says he.

So Ambrose will be in the Spar all week following people around and I’ll be one me own here in the hut.  good thing the weather will be miserable.  We shouldn’t be too busy.

 

Now! Where was I?

 would you look at that!  Amazing how time flies.  Sorry I have been out of touch this last while.  Me phone broke and I had to get one of them new smart phones, guthán phóca cliste, as Gabriel calls them.  Anyway sure I did and Ambrose helps me put Facebook on it and sure haven’t I spent the last ten months on it doing nothing else.  Anyway so finally caught up reading all the Roddy Doyle posts about the two gougers in Dublin so I’m back. Quiet enough now mind you today.   A couple from New Zealand in a rented car that looked like it had the worse of a close encounter with a stone wall: they were lost and looking for Sneem.  Then we had a busload of rugby players from Crossmaglen who ate every Kit Kat in the place and stole all the toilet paper from the Mens.  I’ll have to go to Lidl for more tomorrow.  Can’t go today cos I rode the bike here.  I’ll get more Kit Kats while I’m at it.

 

Bloomsday Twiterature 2016

 Terrible pleased altogether to be asked to host this year’s Bloomsday Twiterature, The Definitive Indefinite Article’s 10,000-year project to broadcast the entire of Ulysses 140-characters per year.  I even borrowed Tony Balfe’s drape from when he was in the Showaddywaddy cover band – closest thing I could find to Edwardian garb at short notice.  Anyway.   Last year’s Twiterature was a huge success.  It is nice to get away from the box and watching the Copa America and the Euros and it was great to give the new intern Cidney something to do to go into town and get a copy of Ulysses and keep her out of me hair for a while.  Jaysus she has me driven up the wall complaining about not being able to get Hamptons Houseshare Hell on the telly below at the house or something but that is a whole other day’s work.

So without further ado, as the many says, I give you Bloomsday Twiterature 2016, a genuine cliffhanger, if I may say so.

then covered the bowl smartly. Back to barracks! he said sternly. He added in a preacher’s tone: For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine

 

Flamenco of all things!

 Quiet enough today.  Strange thing happens just after lunch though.  The young lad of the Hartigans appears out of nowhere tapping at my little window.  I slide it open.

“What’s the flamenco singer’s phone number?” he shouts at me.

“What flamenco singer?  What’re you talking about?” says I.

“What’s the flamenco singer’s phone number?” he says again, beaming at me like a Cheshire cat.

“I have no idea,” says I.

“90 90 9090 90 90 9090 90 90 90909,” he says, bursts out laughing and is off across the field before I can get any sense out of him.

Peculiar young fellah.  Harmless, mind you.  I must ask Seamus Deasy about it.  His daughter was an au pair in Malaga or somewhere.  He might know.

 

The Cliff Experience Reception Experience (Disruptive Innovation in the Prefab Hut Space)

 

Multitasking

Here on me own today.  Greta went to visit her sister in Sneem.  So I’m over and back to the open the coffee shop every other minute and we’re out of Kit Kats again. Ambrose was supposed to get them last Thursday.

The Cliff Experience Reception Experience (Disruptive Innovation in the Prefab Hut Space)

 

The Cliff Experience Reception Experience

Quiet day at the job. Two young wans throwing choc ices at each other in the car park around lunchtime but otherwise uneventful.

 

Fall foliage

Lest there be any accusations of frivolity, here is the Definitive Indefinite Article’s contribution to the flood of images on autumnal foliage that have, well, flooded social media outlets recently.

Foliage likeit used to look in the good old days.

 

 

The Diaries of Col. Trevelyan Makeshift-Hampton. Excerpt 4

Soaring Ambitions of Col. Trevelyan Makeshift-Hampton

Pardon the hiatus.  Out recent legal tussles with Osbert Harbinger-Bastion, the last survivor of Trevelyan, appear to be settled so we can now proceed.  We can publish the diaries and he gets the action figure and gaming rights.

Day 68

Still snowed in at Camp 4.  The chaps are getting very restless.  We ate the last of the Knightley & Babbage Custard Creams at teatime.  We tried to play a few games of billiards to keep our spirits up which was when I discovered that the Hendley had packed me a nineteen and a half ounce cue instead of my twenty-one and a quarter.  Of course he had to made an example of so we fed him to the dogs.  Can’t allow that sort of slovenliness.  It could easily jeopardize the entire mission.  The dogs are now in excellent spirits though I wonder if we might have made a mistake feeding them at night like that.

 

Spring has sprung/pounced/lurched

Given that spring appears to have sprung or pounced or whatever it does and that it would have been Mr. Beckett’s birthday on Sunday, here is one of my favourite descriptions of said season from Watt:

The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep’s placentas and the long summer days and the newmown hay and the wood-pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of the gorse and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling The Roses Are Blooming in Picardy and the standard oillamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February débâcle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again.

 

BE YOU A BROOKLYN* ARTISANAL FOODSTER?

There are many ways to classify cuisines.  Here is one:

Now, try to empty your mind, take a deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth (or chin ring if you have one). In, out.  Now, to which group does ice cream belong?

*Refers not to borough of New York City but to lifestyle brand.

 

Bloomsday Twiterature 2013 is here!

Loyal readers, it is time for our annual installment of Bloomsday Twiterature, our massive 10,000-year-long project of  one tweet-length installment of Ulysses each year.  The story so far:

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

— Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

— Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, ca

The Loyal Reader: Now you’re cooking with gas!  We are really starting to motor!  But tell us this, it is only Friday…

You are correct it is indeed only Friday but past experience has shown that the vast majority of our readers visit us during the workday.  I am sure their weekends are all too crowded with camogie and handball and fixing gutters and picking up the mother from Dunne’s to be visiting the web.

The Loyal Reader: That seems plausible.  I am reminded of advice I have been in the habit of offering at this time of year which is to include at least one gratuitous reference to spandex bikinis to attract new punters.

Will do.  Anyway, without further ado, here is our 2013 Bloomsday Twiterature offering wherein we finally catch sight of the bauld Stephen Daedalus:

tching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen

The Loyal Reader: Ah that’s lovely.  There’s eating and drinking in that.  That’ll keep me going for a while.  See you next year.

Well if you are still in need of more, you can alwasy swing by Ullyses of Stone Street in New York City on Sunday afternoon between 2 and 4 and there will be a great crew reading bits of Ulysses aloud into the sunshine.

 

Olympic Closing Ceremony leak?

The following is a transcript from a piece of paper found on the District Line tube between Plaistow and Upton Park last night:

[…] Exit giant Thatcher as the stadium fills with Pearly Kings, Wenlocks, Mandevilles, taxi drivers, nurses, firemen, fishermen, miners, crofters, tenors, archers, milkmen etc etc.  The din of singing  gradually coalesces into “Knees Up Mother Brown”  Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins, simply dressed, black trousers, white shirts with sleeves rolled up, approach the giant bell.  They solemnly ring it three times and declaim: “Time now ladies n gennelmen!  Drink up!   Time now!  We must clear the premises!  Time now ladies n gennelmen!”

They stand back from the bell and stand meditatively polishing pint glasses with Jubilee tea towels. 

Exeunt singers to tune of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Enter British Gas van.  Approaches Olympic flame.  Technician alights,  consults clipboard, opens manhole, turns off gas extinguishing flame.  Exit British Gas van.  Slow fade to black.

“Time now ladies n gennelmen!”

 

Le Magyar Nouveau est arrivé!

TDIA is gutted to announce that it will not be doing its usual Beaujolais Nouveau tastings this year.  Irish people and partisans of the Aungier Street and Cuffee Street factions across the globe have been celebrating exclusively with Beaujolais nouveau since Thierry Henry won both the coveted Order of the Shiny Tracksuits Sportsman of the Year Award (Aungier Street) and the less coveted but nonetheless prestigious Order of the Shiny Tracksuits Sportsman of the Decade Award (Cuffe Street) for his exemplary showing in the France vs Ireland World Cup qualifier match.  

So we are instead we are doing what many others are and turning out eyes Hungaryward thanks to the pointers of our in-house sommelier Dr. Pol De Paor.

http://www.bluedanubewine.com/wines/hungary/

 

Twiterary Cwiticism

The Earnest Reader: Our Bloomsday reading yesterday provoked a flurry of activity from within the Academic “Community”.  We had not thought dearth had undone so many.  We are therefore delighted to announce the birth of Twiterary Cwiticism.  (Note to public we have already claimed the term Twiterary Theory too.) We have reprinted some of the submissions below.  Needless to say they are limited to 140 characters. 

 The Concerned Reader: Now there is an idea I can really get behind: literary criticism mangled down to 140 characters!

 It was the erstwhile Earl of Rochester who, upon reading Canto VII of Il Purgatorio, remarked to his drinking companions: “A pox on the very

 From Vico, Dante, The Story Untelling by  Rudmose Boaterhat-Pubcrawl, D Litt, Asumpta College Cambridge

 

How can the non Thomist in posse become the harbinger of anti historicity while clinging to the Hegelian precepts gained in years of earnest

 From Joyce and Post Modern Neo-Post-Structuralism, the Postquailist Tendencies by Prof Vicente Caligliari, International Joyce Summer School, Brindisi, Italy

 

When I was a boy old Ma Joyce once caught me robbing the milk bottles off their doorstep.  Drumdondra Road in those days was a place of many

 From I Knew Yr Aul Wan, A Memoir of My Acquaintance With James Joyce by Francis Xavier Pendergast, poet, veterinarian and critic.

 

Bloomsday Twiterature

The Earnest Reader: The Definitive Indefinite Article is proud to present its first annual Bloomsday reading of Ulysses by James Joyce.

The Concerned Reader: If brevity be the soul of it, read on.  Do your worst.

The Earnest Reader: [Reads]

 Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came across from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing

The Concerned Reader:  That’s it, right?

The Earnest Reader:  Yep!  Thats twiterature, 140 characters.

The Concerned Reader: You know there are readings that go on all day and night, with famous actors and the like.

The Earnest Reader:  I know.  And there is nothing to stop me doing this bit of twiterature over and over in different voices.  [Reads in bad Ian McKellan impression]

 Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came across from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing

The Concerned Reader: Please stop now!

The Earnest Reader: Or this, one of those salt of the eeeearth Northside Dubbelin accents loike Misther Jice had:

 Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came across from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing

The Concerned Reader: Is this the fusebox?

The Earnest Reader: I think it is.  Have you ever heard me do Al Pacino?

[Click. Darkness.  Silence]