The Blue Eyed Monster

It's any number of Sundays over the past six years, the waiter brings us to our seats. I had a bit too much to drink last night and crave eggs. Preferably poached and with hollandaise. Sometimes I wonder about the folk for whom food is named after? Benedict. Some guy, in some hotel in New York. Or New Orleans. Whoever he is, at this moment, like a lot of Sunday afternoons, I am very grateful to him. So it's settled. "I'll have that with an orange juice and a cappuccino, thanks." Perhaps, it is unchivalrous to order first, but the twenty seconds extra it buys LCB to make up her mind is invaluable to her. " Hmmm... I'll have a cheeseburger with fries and a coke, please. Oh and a Bloody Mary to start, thanks."


"I thought you were ordering Eggs Florentine," I say. "I was going to, but the burgers here are so good," she breezily retorts, oblivious to the harm she's done. How can stating the obvious be such a surprise? How diminished my potential enjoyment of this meal has become. A burger and chips versus weeny eggs and a muffin? A bloody Bloody Mary!


And so the story goes; of the green eyed monster that is food-envy. I'm sure we've all experienced it. (Haven't we?) I try to be a good sport about it. I know it is a trait unbecoming of an aspiring gentleman. "Would you like a bite?" "Sure," I reply, the thin veneer of nonchalance, cracking, as I use all my restraint not to open my mouth so wide as to render the word 'bite' wholly inadequate. "Mmm...that's really....good... and so juicy," (think Homer drooling). This, of course, is a meandering. It is a context. If you've ever wondered what colour eye the Twitter-envy monster possesses, be ignorant no more. It is blue. And I guess, this story, is of me blinking first.


I follow (what submissive terminology!) 108 good souls, ranging from individuals to media organisations and in turn have harvested a paltry 19 followers. My GF on the other hand follows 118 but has 56 followers. Why the discrepancy? Why I have I hovered between 18 and 20 followers for months now, never once breaking a score?


We, as a couple, share many interests and therefore follow many of the same tweeps. A Venn diagram of our following patterns would reveal a shaded area of intersection far outweighing our idiosyncratic individual diversities. So it's not who we follow.


Nor do I believe gender plays a factor. Yes, the Internet is mostly horny and therefore probably has a cock, but our avatars are graphical, there's no feminine visage and no cleavage, for that matter. 24 men, 16 women and 14 organisations, three of which are feminist in nature, follow LCB. If you discount the number of fictitious West Wing characters that follow her, those number become 19, 13 and 14 respectively. So nothing meaty there.


I have in the past accused her of being a promiscuous follower, but also calculating. Following merely to be followed. Whereas I, on the other hand, am pure and follow in the pursuit of knowledge. I live tweeted the UK and Irish leaders' debates with one polished quip after another, enriching the information stream, if not my own status in Twitter-land. Though LCB tweets movie-news, gossip and fashion pronouncements from the Go Fug Yourself girls, albeit, in addition to the current-affairs and arts that trickle through my own tributary, neither of us tweet about our lunch, or walking to the shop or our regularity. So, our tweeting patterns are largely similar too. (Give or take a the odd comment about Mischa Barton's latest fashion disaster).


THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS (**) WERE ADDED SUBSEQUENT TO INITIAL PUBLICATION. IN OTHER WORDS, THEY'RE FROM THE FUTURE.


*Peruse our respective Twitter homepages and you notice that LCB has tweeted nearly double the tweets I have; 844 to 449. This ommisson was brought to my attention by "Donal," who slipped a comment under the door, late one night. But to shout Eureka! or by jove, I think he's got it, is premature. For I, @pronouncedkwan, reached the 300 tweets mark first. In fact, I knocked 330 tweets out of the ballpark before LCB hit the three-ton mark.


That LCB has upped her TPD (tweets per day) or that mine has decreased can be accounted for.  I had 5 stitches in my hand which kept me out of action for 8 days. Think of Twitter as a dog, or a school-kid who has a week of class before the summer holidays; a week is a long time. And yes, I was feeling a little sorry for myself. My conversion rate from -ing to -er was rubbish, and apathy is a curse to a tweep.


The accusation has also been made that I retweet LCB more than LCB retweets me. Perhaps it is true, but it wasn't always so. She used to retweet me. Nearly every day, at least once. Some days twice, maybe three times. Maybe tweeting is a younger man's game. Maybe I'm just too damned old to perform like I did when we first started tweeting together.*


Oh! how easy it is to cast myself as pure and virtuous and LCB, as a wicked practitioner of the dark art of tweeting. But why do I care? Do I really care? Or have I fallen into the trap vanity has set. In this new sphere without frontiers, status is measured, is quantifiable. 9,963,172. 9,552,114. 3,877,409... Even the fake Leo Messi has 170,000 followers. News media revelled in reporting Charlie Sheen's surge since becoming a tweep and often compile a top-ten of most followed on Twitter. It gives new meaning to the social media term status update.


So, in our Twitter co-existence I am B-list. The camera bulbs don't pop and flash as I walk by, I am the BF of LCB.


But I do not feel diminished. After all, one follower is all I need.

A radio interview with Irish poet Leanne O'Sullivan, winner of the O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry

MPR Leanne O'Sullivan

Perhaps this post is a case of yesterday's news today but Cork poet Leanne O'Sullivan's success in being awarded the O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry last month, is worth mentioning. Even belatedly.


Given by the University of St. Thomas Center for Irish Studies, the $5,000 prize was awarded to O'Sullivan in St. Paul, Minnesota, making the 27 year old the youngest recipient to date.


As with many great discoveries, my discovery of O'Sullivan was by accident. Some three or four years ago, I attended a reading of the Hungarian-born British poet and translator, George Szirtes, whom up to that point, I was not familiar with. That night, after the reading, I set out to learn more, and with a keystroke here and a click, click there, I stumbled upon a poem entitled, 'About Midnight.' As it turns out, my mis-navigation was one of Columbian proportions.


Taken from O'Sullivan's début, Waiting For My Clothes, it was revelatory. To me. Hyperbole aside, it was one of those times when you resonate with language beyond the mere meaning of words, where in a poet's recollection, their voice speaks to you, speaks for you, as if your memory up to that point, had been badly dubbed. 'The Touch Of Him' was the punch Ali never threw, only she did and it was a K.O.


O'Sullivan has since released a second collection entitled Cailleach: The Hag of Beara readings from which are embedded below.

Pictures Speak a Thousand Words

I happened to come across this (poor choice of words) deep in the vast chasm of the Interweb. I think they're trying to make a statement about Fox News' mistake. Subtle, huh? A policy of fight fire with fire, I guess. 

Maybe there are some of you out there, who, during an after-dinner game of charades, with the clock ticking down and struggling to come up with an adequate portrayal of President Obama, may resort to the good ol' sounds like... and proceed to mime a bearded gun toting terrorist. But a mere typo? What do Fox take us for? Oh yeah, that's right...


Of course, I'm all for highlighting the belligerent bias of the Fox News network but did they have to go and ruin a perfectly good t.v?