Pendragon Female No. 4

Back in October, when I was working part time, I somehow managed to get a callback from an open casting for Camelot extras. I say somehow managed because I went to the casting day with the Bear, and if anyone would be expected to get a callback for a series set in the days of beardy, burly, long haired men, it's him with the beardy, burly, long haired head on him.

Nevertheless, t'was I who got the call to spend a day drinking tea in a Portakabin in Bray. I had a costume fitting the previous day and was assigned a spectacularly unflattering light green scratchy dress and a heavy brown cloak in which to wander about Pendragon Castle for a spell. I got needlessly excited when I was sent on my way to the hair and make up trailer, as the hair and make up in question really just meant backcombing the shit out of my hair to give it that Middle Ages rats nest look, with a few small plaits thrown in, and brown make up smushed into my face and hands to give me an authentic smudgy, dirty mush and fingernails. So hot right now.


The scene we were required in called for us to enter the set of the big hall, all agog at the impressive interior and wander along our given routes looking amazed, for we were but local merchants and had never encountered such grandeur. The direction of my track brought me right past Sinéad Cusack as the duplicitous nun and I managed to get in the way of her exit at least eight times or so. Thankfully we were eventually rearranged and it was someone else's go to be that infernal extra that kept crossing in front of her path. All my determined concentration not to step on the dress worn by the girl in front of me or knock anything over OR be distracted by how tiny and gorgeous Eva Green is actually paid off and last Friday night, who was to be seen doddering past in the background?


Me, that's who! Pendragon Female No. 4, all up in yo business! Delighted, I was. I'm still waiting to hear back about my idea for my character's spin-off series, The Girl With The Pendragon Tattoo.

Ahem.

I'll see myself out.

Away With The Birds

For quite some time now, I've been admiring the fun and quirky t-shirt designs of Lady Umbrella and when they very kindly shared a promotional code for a 15% discount on Twitter I figured that was as good a time as any to pounce. Their bright blue "Lady Umbrella Is Away With The Birds" t-shirt won me over with its turbo cute birdcage design, as well as the fact that I can be somewhat away with the birds myself from time to time. Only a few days ago a co-worker was trying to say hello to me while I was on my way to the office and had to whack me with her newspaper to get my attention.



Their customer service is faultless and tremendously friendly, as I discovered when I cleverly managed to order the wrong size from their online shop. There was no problem exchanging it and the t-shirt even arrives with cute as a button badges to boot.


The Lady Umbrella online shop can be found here and they're also at the Loft Market in Powerscourt. The Facebook and Twitter pages are definitely worth a click of the Like and Follow buttons, since they're always running great competitions and discounts. So now you've no excuse not to support a great independent designer. Consider yourself informed.

Barack Attack

As Obamarama and yet more general traffic mayhem gripped the country yesterday morning, I had one eye on the live coverage and the other on the work I was supposed to be doing. All of a shot, an envelope with my name printed on it was thrust into my hand. "Eh..thanks. What's this?" said I, with a bewildered look on my face. "It's a VIP ticket to Obama's speech" came the wondrous reply. I opened the envelope, which went down a little something like this:


To be honest, I still don't know how my name ended up on the list of people in work on which these magic tickets would be bestowed, let alone on the front of that envelope. Maybe there's a gremlin in someone's computer that's taken a shine to me for some reason.

Anyway, off I skedaddled to College Green with Cartman's voice singing "I got a golden tiiicket" firmly lodged in my head. The VIP area was ridiculously close to the stage. Like, properly ridiculous. I was so excited that I didn't even mind having to watch Westlife croon and sway in unison through sideways rain.

THAT effing close, like. Wahh!

When it transpired that Mr. Rockstar President was actually coming down off the stage to meet and shake hands with us mere mortals, the crowd damn near lost their mind. Myself included. My panicked surge towards the barrier was paid off with a proper and brilliant handshake from Michelle (stone cold fox, by the way) but I just missed out on one from Barack, as he was busy being so incredibly lovely to the three little girls in front of me and I didn't want to interrupt as he was telling one of them that she had "the most spectacular blue eyes". I'm not going to lie, at that moment I was really quite jealous of an eleven year old. Nevertheless, my face made it onto the live coverage on RTE. And check this out:


Boom. That'd be MY famous hand, that would.

The Rocky Horror Contraband Whiskey Show

All kinds of merriment was had at last Saturday night's Halloween jaunt to The Sugar Club. It's always fun when behaviour like trashing a venue with toast, rice and party poppers and screaming lines like "Get your tits off the tank, bitch!" are acceptable, if not encouraged. The crowd was awash with excellent homemade costumes in the forms of Chilean miners, blood soaked nurses, Sweeney Todd and fantastic Dia de los Muertos ladies. Not a Playboy bunny to be had, thank fuck.

My own costume entailed a hip flask filled with whiskey safely stowed in my hold-up tights, just to complete the whole Prohibition era dead-girl-about-town look. It also just so happened to empty itself throughout the course of the night. (I'm classy like that.) Free hot chocolate that was kindly handed around by the organisers as we queued outside beforehand found itself magically Irished up, as did several glasses of soda water and lime. Weird. Delicious too.

Also among the crowd of ne'er-do-wells was one Greg Sestero of The Room...er...fame. Relative fame at least. There was a screening of The Room taking place the night after, you see. Billy Flag gave him a shout as he walked up the steps towards the bar and when he looked over at our table and waved, I dutifully squealed and waved both arms in my drunken zombie excitement, because it would appear that I don't do subdued when it comes to The Room.

This is me when we got home, drunk and hiding behind the Bear's camera having realised I had no photos from the night for the blog.

After the show finished and Midnight Burlectro had kicked off onstage, I met a cousin of mine who had descended upon The Sugar Club, and having figured what was on previously, just knew I'd be found there. The thing is, she was there with people from my work, some of whom I was only introduced to for the first time that night. With crazy blackened eyes and fake blood plastered all over my chin. I make one hell of a first impression.

Amsterdammit

The Bear and I got back from Amsterdam yesterday, having survived seven days of Dutch shenanigans. The subsequent time has been spent in a heap on the couch, catching up on telly (Britain's Next Top Model, The IT Crowd and the really quite good nudey-fest Spartacus: Blood & Sand), other blogs and finishing the Steig Larsson books (which I am loving despite myself and my previous condecension for this idiot Girl Who Plays With Matches and Kicks Bees In The Face. I'm totally sold). Between that and being practically asleep at my desk for the most of the morning today, proper blogging will have to wait just a little longer. Soon my pretties. Soon.

She Works Haaard For The Money

So I've only gone and got myself a job.

That's right, a JOB! Fancy that!

Despite the fact that an hour before the interview I managed to get trapped in a dress in a Penney's changing room in a panicked I-need-a-different-outfit-because-the-one-I-was-going-to-wear-is-actually-WAY-too-short situation. That'll teach me to live in torn jeans and dresses that turn out to have much too high a hemline. When I finally figured out that the zip had only gone down halfway I managed to free myself from my floaty floral prison, buy the damn thing and make myself look as presentable as I could manage. Armed with insider information that the organisation I was to be interviewed by loved the Obama campaign, off I went on my nervous way.

This is the flowery trap I got myself in.
We've since become friends and I quite like it now.
(I don't actually have a giant Hello Kitty head in real life. Not all the time anyway.)

I met the Bear for lunch right afterwards and tried to relay what they had asked me and what I had said.

I had no idea.

All I did know was that I rambled like fuck on some answers and praised the bejaysus out of the Obama campaign design, retrospectively hoping that I hadn't gone all Randy Marsh on their asses.

CHAAANGE!
(This is actually hilarious if you've seen the Obama episode of South Park. Really.)

Anyway I somehow managed to pull it off and am now jobsharing with another designer, leaving me with 2-3 days off a week during which I can watch a fuckload of Murder She Wrote, thanks to the witchcraft contained in the digital tv recording box we now have.

Series link?

Why yes. Yes in-motherfucking-deed.

I Can Haz Job?

Well, they've put the cat out at work. On the plus side, I don't have to suppress the urge to punch my now former boss each day and I'll have loads of time to pack up for the Big Move In with the Bear. (Which really translates to having loads more time to procrastinate seeing as I hate packing.)

Jessica, I'm back!

Buddy the elf, what's your favourite colour?

The gospel according Facebook has designated today as "Answer the phone like Buddy the Elf" day, which is all lovely and silly and Christmassy and soon someone's BOUND to ring me, right? I've been trying to feel Christmassy over the last while, I really have, but it seems to come in bursts and then work goes and ruins it all. I was starting to think that the powers that be in work may not actually be that bad, but I've since put it down to Stockholm Syndrome. Especially since I found out that we're most likely not finishing until 5 next Wednesday, while the boys in the printing room downstairs get to sneak off to the pub around 3. Something like that is inevitably going to kick any potential Christmas feeling right in the balls. And yet Christmas FM playing Stop the Cavalry and the Bing Crosby version of Jingle Bells on Tuesday evening had me bouncing and grinning on the Number 15 bus home like a ridiculously happy lunatic.


But the real super turbo Christmas feeling doesn't arrive until Christmas Eve. Every year, without fail, after the obligatory mass attendance, everyone in my Dad's family - aunts, uncles, cousins, cousin's babies and what have you - arrives at my Grandad's house for a feed of little triangular ham sandwiches and Tanora.

Oh Tanora. Surely the drink of the Gods. If the gods were from Cork, like. Tanora (which is normally only sold in Co. Cork) is something of a Christmas tradition for this particular side of the family. When my Dad was little, the only time of the year that fizzy drinks were in their house was Christmas, and his mother being from Cork, that drink was Tanora. A particular Centra at home buys in Tanora at this time of year specifically for some of my uncles who live close by, and we've been known to stop in Youghal to pick up 15 two litre bottles and a few pallets of cans of tangerine awesomeness to stock up for the festive season. When I came back to Dublin after Christmas last year to spend the remaining holidays with the Bear, I happened upon cans of Tanora in the Glasnevin Tesco and excitedly texted my Dad a photo of them. My enthusiasm for this carbonated tangerine flavoured drink is frankly ridiculous.

During my second year of college in Cork, a 500ml bottle of it was brought out. It was a good day. When Tcup and another friend of mine tasted this most revered beverage, at my behest, for the first time, they took a drink and said: "It just tastes like Fanta." Heathens. Well to me and all my cousins it tastes like muthafuckin' Christmas time.

BRING.

IT.

ON.

Letter of Complaint

Dear Fuckface ( aka People I Work For)

Oh, I'm ever so sorry, you see when I took on this job with the assurance that I would be paid the same, if not more (Wow! How fortune has favoured me! Thought I.) as my last job, which was in an actual design studio with nice colourful mugs and work I quite enjoyed doing, I foolishly thought that this would in fact, be the case. I mean I really should have realised that what you actually meant was "we're paying you less than that, we thought you knew though, so either take it or go fuck yourself".

I can also see now that it's really an inspired money saving technique to equip the design studio with computers that were bought back when the Ketchup Song was in the charts and Nickelback just had their first big hit, which would make them SEVEN YEARS old, oh and the software hasn't been updated in three or four years you say? Fantastic! That's just the kind of challenge I so look forward to, nothing makes me happier than a computer that's so slow it makes me want to peel off my eyelids, or a printer that spits out pages with the artwork going sideways for no good reason, not to mention when my computer randomly dies or takes ten minutes to open a bigger-than-average file in Photoshop, that kind of thing just makes me feel so alive, y'know?

Just as a suggestion, you might want to give new employees this handy guide on their first day in their shiny new job, explaining what certain phrases or instructions really mean.

We say:
We want to give this product a new look, move away from the old identity.

We mean:
Make it look the same as the old one, but more obnoxious and garish.

We say:
Yeah, that looks great now.

We mean:
I'll be back in half an hour to get you to change everything while I stand over your shoulder and instruct you to move and resize things in a manner that will make you want to unzip your boot and beat me around the head with it.

We say:
You'll be getting a pay review in four months.

We mean:
You'll be getting a pay review in six months.

We say:
Next time, make sure you get a full brief from us.

We mean:
Next time, don't bother trying to make it look well designed and thought out, just make everything bright red and twice the size it should be. Like how a flyer would look if it was shouting in your face, knocking things over and banging cymbals together. Visually, like.

Thank fuck the Toy Show is on tonight.

Mind the Gap

It’s all been a bit quiet here in Lemonade Land, has it not? In case anyone was wondering, this is partly because I’ve gone and gotten myself a JOB. Imagine that! As soon as I did get it however, I promptly took two days off to go swanning around London with the Bear for an extra long long weekend, as you do. I got a brilliant picture of a squirrel, ate my body weight in Krispy Kreme doughnuts and had pistachio shells thrown at me by a rival table because our team were slightly cheating at a pub quiz. Douchebags. Also I got stung by Ryanair for €35 on the way over because my suitcase was an inch too big to fit into their poxy hand luggage frame. But more of that later. For now, it’s procrastination time in work already, and I’m googling Rocky Horror outfits in preparation for the Halloween show in Das Sugar Club tomorrow night.

Oh it’s on.

Professional Avoidance

Watching far too much Murder She Wrote.

Making Rice Krispie buns.

Reading, nay, LOVING The Princess Bride book.

Spinning around in my lovely anchor dress.

Making orange flavoured Rice Krispie buns after having a dream about them.



Anything to avoid looking for a job.

Spain In (As Small) A Nutshell (As I Can Manage)

Apart from the English classes and evening activities with the kids, there were shenanigans aplenty for us teachers this year in Summer School. Such as...

Midlands Man who spoke at 100mph having to go to hospital with appendicitis in the second week, which subsequently led to a game of Pin the Appendix on MM one night.



Dizzy Redhead getting in a fight with a local skanger for kicking the window of her car and getting punched in the face for her trouble.

Grouchy Dude swearing like a sailor and scandalising the other girl teachers with his liberal use of the word cunt. He also got his cock out one night while wearing a dress (there were two priests and a monk in the room at the time, but like me, I think they only saw his arse) and lacerated his eyeball on the second last night with a piece of straw from a sombrero eating incident. He spent the next three days mostly blinded and with a bandage over his eye. I probably shouldn't have told some of his students that his eye had to be popped out and now he keeps it in his pocket, especially since little Jaime with his blue glasses looked like he was going to cry after I told him. Oops.

The Girls playing Wii Bowling against the priests and monitors outside when the kids had gone to bed, but all GIANT ON A BIG SCREEN! Amazing! And we won too!



Loopy Limerick Lass scoring three different fellas out one night, and getting a mortifying surprise during a crisp factory tour we had one Wednesday with the kids when she ran into one of them there, as that's where he in fact worked.

Me drinking so much of this deadly Spanish rum one night that the barman gave me a free one and I sang Love Shack all by myself for everyone when we got back to the school.

Everyone drinking so much of the aforementioned rum, €4 supermarket vodka, cheap wine, lethally strong but exceptionally tasty punch and one night in particular, an actual BUCKET of Mojitos (which I made sure I was sitting next to) that there were plenty of hangovers such as this one:



Oh and on our last night, most of us had gone to bed by 12.30 seeing as the night before had been a session that lasted till 6 in the morning, 7 for some. However the priests and a few of the monitors had other ideas, in that they arrived up to our rooms at 1.30 to bang on our doors to get us up to drink with them. They also stole everyone's left shoe at one point, played Suck & Blow with us, threw the Limerick Lass into the pool one night, tried to throw me in the following night and insisted on teaching us a Spanish song at 2.00 one morning when we were all exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. But they wouldn't let us.

Yeah, priests and a monk played Suck & Blow with us. Hilarious and downright weird.

Espcially since I was standing next to the monk.

Scorchio!

Well look who came crawling back, tis I! Week One is almost down in the Summer School Big Brother house, and seeing as I unintentionally slept in today and missed the excursion to a nearby city due to unforseen circumstances involving a bottle of four euro vodka and falling to bed at 5.30, still convinced I´d be up in time for the bus, I actually have time to bagsie the ancient computer and blog a little!

Things I´ve Been Up To This Week

Having the craic with the Londoner, a 6´4" combination of Frank Spencer, Lurch and Pat Kenny, who will be 50 in August and speaks Spanish with an English accent.

Getting hammered and showing off my innie/outie bellybutton trick. Twice.

Ordering a heap of chickpeas to make hummus with the kids in Cuisine class, only to find we´d been given twelve tins of peas instead. And rice.

Missing the Bear like a mad yoke altogether.

Getting my heart broken by 11 year old Javier who has spent the week in tears because he wants to go home and his parents aren´t coming to see him on Sunday like the other kids. Bastards.

Watching Monsters Inc en Espanol and discovering that Spanish for Kitty is in fact Gatita.

Getting a sunburned arse out by the pool while correcting exams. It´d better be gone by the time our day trip to the water park next Wednesday rolls around, otherwise it´ll certainly make slides rather painful.

Trying to come up with a collective noun for cunts. We got as far as a delegation of cunts or an Ard Fheis of cunts.

Suggestions welcome.

Una Cerveza Con Limon Por Favor

In an effort to postpone any potential job hunting I could or should be doing, this coming Saturday at 6.20am (ungodly hour of the morning courtesy of Aer Lingus), I'll be hightailing it to a Summer School in the north of Spain that I worked in for July 2006 and 2007. That's right, with ne'er a TEFL to my name and six words of Spanish, I'm actually an English teacher in disguise. I'll be gone for four weeks, and although I'll miss the Bear and Tayto crisps like crazy, I'm looking forward to the day trips to bread factories and water parks, tortilla, cheap supermarket booze, acting the maggot in the swimming pool, tortilla and drinking games with the Spanish priests that run the school. Of course there's the actual teaching of classes in the morning and two hours of activities with the kids in the evening too but it's a pretty sweet deal even though you do have to go to mass on Sunday mornings.

Last Day of School

That's what it felt like getting up and walking into work today, it being my last day of employment and all. And I might have felt a bit down had this song not popped up into my earphones. I defy anybody not to laugh and join in.



After all, IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THE ROCK WANTS TO GO GET DIAMOND RINGS OR NOT.

Wise words indeed.

What the..?

It was just here two seconds ago! I think. It wasn't much of a to-do list anyway seeing as they're hardly going to hand any new jobs over to me it being my last week and all, but I haven't even left my desk and it's somehow disappeared. It's not in the bin and its not under the heap of papers that should be in the bin by now. This is weird. Maybe there's a paper eating gremlin hiding under my desk. The cute furry Mogwai type though, not this type. Although he does seem handy enough with a phone, which would mean I don't have to answer it. Come out, creepy little gremlin and make yourself useful instead of confusing me.

No results found. Please adjust your search and try again.

Yeah well maybe I would "adjust my search" if all I wanted to do wasn't in fact graphic design, and print design at that, you lousy search robot. I really shouldn't have spent four years in college pretending web design didn't exist and sticking my fingers in my ears shouting LA LA LA at the mere mention of Flash or Dreamweaver. So now all job ads for graphic designers include landmines such as "interactive design", "online graphic design", "knowledge of Flash, HTML, CSS" and all print designers can shag off because we don't need them or want them and they smell weird anyway. Bastards. As it happens, the two most suitable jobs I've come across happen to be back where I'm from in Waterford. And as much as I like heading back to the Déise of a weekend, moving back there altogether would make it only a matter of time before I start naming the paperclips on my desk and making friends with them. And that might be fun for a while, just me and my paperclippy buddies going on office based adventures but it would most likely get old rather quickly. Alternatively, there have been one or two jobs lurking in the shadowy outskirts of my search, sneering and rubbing their dirty hands together, as they are jobs in the dreaded signage industry, which I spent about ten months working in after I left college and would not go back to for love nor money nor my very own B.O.B. voiced by Seth Rogen.

Le sigh.

Friday

"It's bad news, I'm afraid" said he, upon calling me into his office.

"Oh, the fold out brochure?" I asked, oblivious as ever, spotting printouts of one I had been working on that were strewn on the table.

"Oh, no. No not that" he said, tidying them away. "It's about your job."

Ah. That old recession chestnut.

In the course of the conversation he mentioned that he realised things might be difficult for me and my girlfriend now. (He knows that I live with one other girl, ie T Cup.) At the time I was too blindsided by the freight train of impending unemployment that had just crashed into my little bubble to notice what he said, and just carried on. But I'm pretty sure my soon to be former boss thinks I'm a lesbian. Suggestions as how to rectify this over the next four weeks are welcome.

I probably won't go with the Bear's idea to wear a badge proclaiming "I heart cock".

Probably.

Maintenant

No particular reason.

The Good:
I'm off work tomorrow for my brother's graduation.
I've gotten really quite good at MarioKart Wii.
A job I've been working on since January has FINALLY gone to print.

The Bad:
Weather is a bag of shite.
Think I'm getting sick.

The Ugly:
I've got a cold sore. Sexy.

Sharing is caring, right?

K

Oh Fuck

Argh, I've fucked up in work and now I have to tell my boss that yes, that photo is terrible quality and no, I didn't spot it before this job went to print last week. Fuckity fuckity fuckaroo. Just waiting for him to finish on the phone and then I'll have to go in and face it. Fuck!

K