Keith Barry is an Irish magician. That's about 90% of what I know about him. I caught his Irish TV show a few years ago, and it seemed that he was just aping Derren Brown's tricks and style, but without the charm. I didn't pay too much attention to him.
When he was hosting Ireland's version of Deal or No Deal, I had assumed that he had given up on the magicianing lark, but it seems that his star has continued to rise - his hypnotism shows have drawn major crowds and broken records in Ireland, and he even made a 4-part series for Discovery.
He's clearly doing something right, and I've great respect for magicians, but when I tuned in to his appearance on Limerick's Live 95FM to promote his tour, he just sounded like a perverted 13-year old boy, giddily bragging about how ladies were having "massive Os" on stage. In case you missed it, he said it again and again, each time more unnerving, an ill-fitting phrase-of-choice for a man in his thirties. Yes Keith, your potency is such that ladies can orgasm from your very suggestion, but please don't sound like such a potential-sex offender next time you're trying to lure in the bawdy blue-collar crowd.
I couldn't find a copy of the recording, but in the first interview I found on YouTube, he asserts that the camerawoman is 'waxed, not shaven' within the first minute. Classy, classy guy!
Anyhow, what really prompted this ad was catching a few minutes of 'Deception with Keith Barry' on Discovery. I noticed that the producers put as much effort into designing the title card as Keith does into creating his act. Keith sees what other magicians are doing that looks cool, and then claims it as his own.
So the producers are making his title screen - they take a picture of him standing in front of something with his arms crossed, slap some text over it, then click through the fonts until something looks decent, like 12-year old girls formatting a book report.
"'Cracked' looks cool. Good enough for you? Let's pillowfight!"
It bothers me when this is done, so to punish Keith Barry and the lack of effort, I made a graphic of the show that I wish I caught five minutes of:
Still not painting a proper picture? Okay - everyone knows and is sick of Comic Sans, right? This is how much effort they put in:
Alright, that's all for today. File this under 'General begrudgery of successful Irish people'.
Even though I'm only getting around to writing about it now, an article that appeared on Time Magazine's website a few weeks ago caught my attention as it spoke of a study in which it arose that “those who never drink are at significantly higher risk for not only depression but also anxiety disorders, compared with those who consume alcohol regularly.”
As a teetotaller, this article provided me with an opportunity to reflect on my friends’ perpetual goading in the light of this scientific evidence – were they really just worried about my happiness all along?
"People in the top fifth percentile of drinkers had the highest odds for anxiety. But it was abstainers who were at the highest risk for depression — higher even than the heaviest of drinkers."
Abstaining from alcohol is worse than being the heaviest drinker? Christ! That’s pretty bleak, and certainly seems counter-intuitive. Before I decided to repent for a poor life-style choice, I decided I’d better drilling down a little deeper into the article, and sure enough, some equivocation arose.
It turns out that “the abstainers in the study sample were more likely to have illnesses such as osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia”, or “were formerly heavy drinkers” - “It makes sense that they would have more psychological distress than others, but only 14% of the abstainers in the Norway study fit this category.”
"The most powerful explanation seems to be that abstainers have fewer close friends than drinkers, even though they tend to participate more often in organized social activities. Abstainers seem to have a harder time making strong friendship bonds, perhaps because they don't have alcohol to lubricate their social interactions. After all, it's easier to reveal your worst fears and greatest hopes to a potential friend after a Negroni or two."
My reaction to the ‘fewer close friends’? Seems right on the money – it may be the cognitive dissonance speaking, but I’m happy with the number of close friends I have. The statistical probability that I ‘participate more often in organized social activities’ than non-drinkers just seems laughably absurd when viewed from an Irish perspective. What other social activities are there in this country?
The conclusion from the study itself states:
"The risk of case-level anxiety and depression is elevated in individuals with low alcohol consumption compared to those with moderate consumption. Individuals who label themselves as abstainers are at particularly increased risk. This increased risk cannot fully be explained by somatic illness, social activity or 'sick-quitting'."
Curious - it seems that it's hard to peg why abstainers are quite so miserable. This bit makes sense to me, when reflecting on personal experience. It doesn’t happen particularly often, but every now and again my teetotalling ways are exposed to someone at a social function who insists on introducing me to another who shares my disposition. What typically follows is a painful interaction with a person whose personality is fundamentally broken, who is abstaining from alcohol to please their parents / please Jesus / safeguard their chastity, and is trying to piece together a rag-tag band of non-drinking renegades to overthrow the status quo! These people typically strike me as being on the brink of alcoholism.
I’ve casually mentioned that I don’t have the slightest interest in sports, or cars, or homosexual sex, but have never been introduced to another who doesn’t share my disinterest in these topics, why should drinking be any different?
Stupid social encounters aside, I don’t believe that I fall into the mental-health risk category because twice a week I refuse to imbibe expensive beverages that override my motor control, disable my autonomy, coax my bodily effluvia onto the pavement, and convince me that boisterously singing and dancing along to cheesy songs from the 80s is a really compelling proposition.
It just wasn’t my week... The following four tales of woe are related only by the long-lasting psychological trauma they have incurred. I have painfully relived the events here, as an attempt to document the root cause of sudden shift in my temperament that my loved ones must endure for the rest of my days.
The Heist I love Cadbury’s Crème eggs. To an unhealthy extent. I’m sure that their seasonal-novelty is only half of the reason why I am compelled to shovel copious amounts of them into my face. I find them so arrestingly moreish, that the only way I can moderate my intake is to freeze them, thus making the act of cracking the outer chocolaty-shell a delicious challenge. On more than one occasion I’ve been airlifted to the nearest hospital to have my stomach pumped following a fondant-overdose (note- may not be true).
I tell you this, dear reader, so you can imagine the utter horror that struck me last Saturday. As I looked lovingly at the 6-pack of oval-wonders I had just purchased, and gently caressed the cardboard housing, my index finger felt a slight bump on the side of the packet where there shouldn’t have been one. It was a tear. Someone had pulled a Crème-Egg-Caper! As of yet, the local detectives have yet to return my calls, so I’m appealing to anybody who was in the Dunnes Stores in the Parkway Shopping Centre Limerick, on the 12th of January 2008 to come forward with any information they might have. I’m suspecting it was an inside job.
Whatever bastard deprived me of the full half-dozen lumps of joy is going to pay.
Air: The Basis of Breathing, but Bane of my Breakfast
I’m a stickler for bag scrunching. I like my cereal to be as fresh and as crispy as the day I opened it.
I like Weetabix. It’s a good cereal. Possibly the best cereal. My most prolific afternoons are often attributed to the bricks of wheat I ate that morning.
It’s a safe assumption then, that I like my Weetabix to be as fresh and as crispy as the day I opened it. But what if it wasn’t exactly fresh and crispy on the day I opened it? Amazingly enough, due to some packing error, the plastic wrapping over my ‘Bix was open before I laid eyes on ‘em, meaning that the air had been getting at the precious slabs of whole-wheat goodness for an amount of time that doesn't bear thinking about!
My housemates skimped on the sympathy, so feel free to leave your condolences in the comments section.
Running on Empty? I Wish!
I enjoy warmth. I enjoy washing my hands with hot water. I’m quite partial to having clean dishes and silverware too. I’m also a fan of eating hot food that was prepared on the stove.
Of course, I’ve been deprived of every one of those things, as my rented accommodation relies on the empty canister of gas out the back of the house for central heating, hot water, and the stove. The amount of things this has deprived us of is frustrating and liberating in equal measure. Sure, it sucks having a pile of crusty plates stacking up because washing them in cold water is pointless, but at least I have a reason not to shave!
My strategy has been to lounge around in other people’s houses as much as possible. My father told me to call over for a cup of tea – I left his house 8 hours later. When I have no choice but to stay in this sizeable icebox, I wear as many layers as possible. Whilst this provides most of my body with ample insulation, my hands get unusably frigid during typing endeavours such as this one, so in between lines I shove my hands under my ass until my buttocks numb, (which incidentally, is fun sensation that I heartily endorse).
I’m not the only one struggling with this recent inconvenience. Two of my housemates have tried to lure me into their rooms for bodywarmth-sharing purposes, and one of them has misappropriated the toaster from the kitchen and created a tinfoil satellite in the hopes of Macguyvering up a heating solution to tide us over.
Dead On Arrival
I’m a bit of a tech-whore. I have to restrain myself on an almost daily basis from blathering on about new innovations and breakthroughs that I’m excited about on this very blog. When I get a computer, I tend to get quite attached. I’ve taken to giving them names based on their aesthetics, and I casually refer to them as such to the befuddlement of my few remaining friends. They’re like my children, and I love them as such. The latest addition to my computer-family was Landis. Landis was a misbehaving old sort, and much like as if he were my own troubled child, I put him up for adoption.
Sorry - I’m confusing myself with this sloppy metaphor business. Anyway, Landis was sick from the first day I had him. In three months, I spent a total of around seven hours on the phone to Dell Tech Support, lost all my data 8 (!) times, had two visits from an engineer, went through four harddrives and two motherboards, but still, nothing fixed the problems. The final straw was Dell Support telling me that there was nothing wrong with my computer whatsoever, based on the extremely shallow diagnostics they ran, only for the Harddrive to physically fail a few hours later. Following a somewhat epic struggle, I prevailed in getting a refund, despite the endeavours of the folk at Dell’s Indian call-centre who assured me such a thing was impossible.
Dell’s courier collected the computer today. Considering I’m not a particularly sentimental sort, I found myself quite choked up at the prospect of disposing of a prized (if inherently flawed) possession. The folder I backed up my data in was rather melodramatically called ‘Goodbye Landis’. Of course, part of the reason I felt as though I was at the end of the era could have something to do with the successor to Landis’ throne, but that’s a blog entry for another day (Monday hopefully).
Stashing Landis into his cardboard coffin was a ritual I was all too familiar with, but the prospect of never seeing him again saddened me somewhat, especially since the final 24 hours of use I got out of him were the best I had ever got out of him over our brief time together. Looking morosely through a rain-spattered window as the Interlink van crawled out of the driveway and out of sight, I almost began to regret being so harsh on poor Landis.
~
I won’t dwell in my despair for too long... Maybe this will cheer me up.
I arrived back in Ireland after a rather splendid Thanksgiving in Wisconsin (as you may be aware), and I thought it only fair to detail the kinks of reacclimatizing oneself. (doesn't the word 'acclimatize' just look so wrong?)
That's right - I'm talking about how I fared upon returning to my native lands after a meagre 8 days around the football throwin', burger-guzzlin', signpost shootin', Jesus-lovin', monster-truck watchin', light-beer quaffin', imperial-system measurin', rock-music makin', chicken-flavoured-biscuit chompin', Hummer-drivin', icecap meltin', country invadin' ragamuffins that we know and love as simply; Yanks!
Truthfully, I only noticed one small detail, and it didn't occur to me until long after I left Shannon airport. The following night, when driving in my car I was unusually anxious, if the speedometer was anything to go by. Despite the fact that I was on the same roads that have taken me home for the past four years, my 10 minute journey took 20. The reason?
Fear. Fear of the dark.
That's right folks! After 8 days of being a passenger on a small offering of the State's brilliantly lit (not to mention straight as an arrow) road network, I managed a reprise of a fear most people forget about around the same time they retire their training potty (mine was called Mr Gobbles).
Initially, I was appalled with myself - I was being ridiculous! But upon reflection, I realised that maybe hurtling headfirst into the black abyss at 100 kilometres an hour guided only by small beam of light to cut a swatch into the pitch-black before you might be something that we as a squishable species should shy away from!
What's worse, when your eyes finally manage to adjust to the scant few drops of luminance on a country road that features no public lighting, and your photoreceptor cells are suddenly flooded with the glaring headlights of the oncoming car that has come out of the bend you only saw pop out of the black a second ago. It's at this point that you are no longer driving based on what you can see - you are now blindly flailing the wheel around in whatever mental-snapshot you managed to take of the 10 metres of straight road ahead of you, and you're hoping your vision comes back before any dog/tree/child/wall/Yank/ditch imposes itself into your path.
Okay, maybe not - that is quite an allegation, but three out of three times that I've gone to Cartridge World and presented them with more than one ink cartridge for refilling, at least one of them is never seen again.
Today at work, the fax machine started whining that it needed ink, and while searching for a replacement in the office, I found another one that had been spent. emblazoned with a 'Refilled at Cartridge World' sticker. Seeing as this world of cartridges was just across the street, I thought paying them a visit made perfect sense.
Something about that place just isn't right. After entering, I'm presented with a foreboding door marked 'Private' to my left, and a glass door to the right leading into an empty room with a few cartridges and a cash-register. After strolling through into this vacant space, a bell dings, summoning a minion from the secret lab that lays beyond the secret door.
Scruffy-Beared-Minion takes my cartridges and tells me to come back in a half hour, and I am only too happy to comply. I return to the empty room at the prescribed time to collect my two cartridges, but this time I am greeted by Chunky-Blonde-Minion. She hands me one ink cartridge, and apologetically tells me that the other isn't printing 'finely enough', as an unusually well-cued flash of lightning illuminates the room. After asking for an explanation and essentially getting the same sentence, repackaged with extra sincerity, I find the conversation has hit a wall; calling only for a confused thanks and farewell.
I left without the other cartridge. The other cartridge that had previously been filled at Cartridge World...
I have three theories:
1. The woman was telling her truth, the cartridge was unfit for giving to a customer, and company policy cares enough about the environment so as to dispose of discarded cartridges in an eco-friendly manner.
2. The woman was lying! Her job at the company is to lie to and steal from customers, so they can sell the refilled cartridge to another sucker that costs the organisation mere cents! Think of the profits involved!
3. Cartridge World kept the cartridge. Last time they filled it, they placed a recording device and an x-Ray camera to spy on the company, and our secrets are being harvested from the high-tech device as I type. Soon, they will have compiled enough information on all of their customers to begin blackmailing and generally taking over the world in an evil fashion...
A quickie for ya; this is what I'm can see from my room at the moment.
This snow and blistering cold is actually quite useful because I'm nearing my 30th consecutive hour of being awake; since I sacrificed my sleep last night to hit my deadlines today, the perma-erect nipples are the only thing keeping me sharp. My busy day went quite well, despite my lack of slumber. Started off with me making a presentation to my Rhetoric class on a Catholic mass. It was supposed to be a 'cultural breakdown,' but since I winged it and was deulsionally tired, it turned into a ten minute lecture on why everybody should be agnostic. I won't indulge myself with much hyperbole and poetic license (because my buddy Krampe was there, and I know she reads this!), but I will note that for every ten Relgiously conservative types I successfully pissed off, I got a glimmer of admiration from the two people in the class who could kinda, sorta, just maybe understand where I was coming from, which kinda made it worthwhile, I guess!
Next I had my last Audio/Radio class, where we recorded postulation on Global Warming for our Prof's radio show (I honestly have little recollection of this; it's likely I fell asleep while reading), and then I took a Psychology exam! Could be the delusion speaking, but I think I did pretty well... I'll keep you posted!
My plans for the rest of the day involve taking it seriously easy; I'm going to sleep for at least two hours, then eat, then vegetate for a few more hours until I can sleep again... At the moment, I feel as though I could last the rest of the day on the sheer amount of caffeine I consumed today as it is, but I feel a headache setting in, so I should nip it in the bud...
Just because I think it's funny (and maybe a little creepy), this is what the view from inside C5 was yesterday evening;
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