Pitch and Putt with Becket and Joyce

Great stuff altogether.

"Pitch and putt? More like pitch and slut...the sky the colour of a peach...peach and...and...and hut; PEACH AND HUT!!!"

Textually transmitted. The perfect Text Vol. 2

The idea of a text message as a connection to another person, it's better than a phone call in many ways, it can be more telling, that momentary connection, when the other person reads those 160 characters, a mini novel that you have crafted just for them. 160 characters that won't be read by anyone or ever see the light of day again, a fleeting piece of art.

Some of my favourite texts are the ones that are waiting for me when I wake up. 160 characters exactly:


You ever wake up sweating, jolted from a dream so terrifying, so sexually perverse and profane that it makes you rethink your whole life? I’m only asking like…

Textually Active. The perfect text. Vol 1

The previous few entries have gotten me to play with the idea of Texting as an Art Form . It sort of stems back to a conversation I once had with Roddy Doyle in an interview when I asked him about whether the art of writing was in decline, he replied by saying that it has never been stronger, everyone writes, every day, maybe not at a typewriter in a damp study, trying to churn out a novel, but perhaps in an email, or a text message...or a blog. But if you think about it, similar to poetry, texting is literature almost in its purest form, you pare away the fat to be left with the finest of meat, in a text message, you must communicate exactly what you are trying to say in the fewest characters possible, 160 usually. This is my first attempt at creating the perfect text, it's 160 characters long, with correct punctuation and spelling. As with all the best texts, it describes the events of a previous night's social engagement, or more aptly, its aftermath.

I didn’t fall exactly. My head stopped,but my legs started to walk away from me. I found myself at a 45 degree angle, nearly horizontal, then gravity took over.

160 exactly (with spaces). More to come.

Novels in Text Speak, Volume 4: The Grapes of Wrath

Crops no gro
Car no go
California overflow



(I got into a rhyming scheme and just kinda went with it)

Novels in text Speak- Volume 3: Fight Club

Who iz Tylr Drtn?
Fight clb= shhh
Fight clb= shhh
I iz?

Novels in text speak- Volume 2: Animal Farm

Pigs >= Others

Novels in text speak- Volume 1: Oliver Twist

Cn I haz more pleez?

A Proper Experiment- Supersize me (with Whiskey)

Track of the week: Spoon- I turn my camera on

The emancipation of Joe Duffy

I had been awake for three days; I hadn’t been able to sleep since my mission came to me in a dream. It wasn’t a dream exactly, more of a state of involuntary meditation that comes with the mixing of hallucinogens and alcohol.

I had fallen off my bed when my alarm went off, in the ensuing scramble of buttons and bedclothes, I drunkenly knocked the radio off the nightstand and the Joe Duffy show came on. As I lay there, in a stupor, with my brain feeling like a pair of wet slippers and mumbling incoherently to myself; it was through this haze…that Joe Duffy spoke to me. He spoke to all his listeners of course, but I was the only one who actually understood what he was really saying.

He had just finished listening to an old woman from Howth tell him that this was the first day in fifty years that she had not bought the Irish Times because it had gone up by twenty cent.

Needless to say, Joe was appalled.

As I’m sure we all were.

This posh old woman’s life is obviously ruined.

The switchboard of the studio lit up with people giving out about the situation, proposing boycotts, wanting to burn effigies.

Joe was all up for it; the only time he paused to take a breath was when someone blamed the Polish people, or the black Polish people, their supposed to be the worst kind.

He went to a commercial break after that revelation.

It was at this point that my mental connection with Joe Duffy was established. I could see him in my mind’s eye being led out of the studio by a chain attached to an electric dog collar around his neck during the commercial break. He was tied to the back wall of the radio building and scraps of food were thrown at him from the back of the canteen. He urinated against the wall and took a nap on the bed of recycled paper. He was thrown articles from the Economist and The Farmers Journal and forced to read and adopt their skewed ideas or he would be beaten with a five foot length of plastic wavin pipe by an unpaid RTE intern…the sound of the hollow pipe whacking off his bare, pudgy belly traveled across the country and into my bedroom.

I sat up with a jolt and held the radio speaker to my ear before our connection could be severed. The break was over, they had just come back to hear this same woman tell of how many letters she had written to the Irish Times, her favourite one was the time she got the Gardaí to call to her neighbours house because her gate was squeaking and keeping her awake at night. Of course the Irish Times and the national radio station was the perfect forum for this discussion.

Joe agreed with her endlessly, but between the callers, before the jingle, I could hear him whimper softly, he wanted out, he wanted away from this sponsored bigotry and boredom, to be set free from the shackles of RTE, he wouldn’t have to be fed scraps of food that were left behind in the canteen from the crew of Fair City any more, the beatings would stop, and he would no longer be subjected to sodomy from Gerry Ryan while being force-fed a cocktail of prescription drugs…Gerry’s huge, sweaty carcass looming over him, then putting his cigars out on the small of his back after he had finished having his wicked way with Joe’s drugged up shell of a body.

You see why I had no choice of course. I only had one option; I had to save Joe Duffy from the hands of these evil oppressors.

Three days after my spiritual experience, I got myself put on board a tour bus going from Galway to RTE studios in Dublin. I had stayed up all night adding block after block of dark hashish to the hookah in the middle of my bare room, with pictures of Joe taped to the wall in front of me, and a dart board with Gerry Ryan’s face on it. I was preparing myself mentally for my mission.

We got to the studios; I had spent the entire journey listening to recorded reruns of the show, trying to pick out other coded messages he was sending me.

We passed through the security checkpoint without any hassle; obviously I wasn’t the first person who had tried to infiltrate the compound under false pretences, with an agenda of liberation and emancipation on my mind. The show was just starting as we started on our tour of the buildings; the tour guide was showing us around the canteen. The eatery was filled with semi-famous pseudo celebrities gorging themselves on Celtic tiger food, salads and lobster, washed down with half-tall-double-fat-semi-caff-choc-mint-mocha-latte-cappuccinos.

I eyed the cast of Fair City ominously as they queued for their doses of caffeine. They eyed me back and whispered amongst themselves…were they on to me? Did they know about my mission?

The tour moved on to the main news studios, where the lies of other news stations were repackaged and passed on to us through the trusting eyes and piercing stare of Brian Dobson to an entire nation.

“And this is a camera.” The tour guide said as he pointed to a news camera in the main studio. The rest of my group nodded and ‘oooed’ and ‘aaahd’. I simply stared at him, looking into his eyes for signs of drug abuse, I wanted to see how deep this thing went, was this guy another pawn in the game, or was he one of them, and could he be trusted when things turned nasty?

“Where do they broadcast the radio from?” I asked him as a test. He shot me a knowing look.

“How do you mean?”

“The radio shows, you know, like Joe Duffy or Gerry Ryan.” I said, trying to act nonchalant.

“They’re downstairs.” He said, leading the group in the other direction, towards the newsroom.

I made a break for the stairs as soon as his back was turned.

Joe Duffy’s show had just started. If I acted quick enough, I could save him an extra day of hardship; we could run away together to a Greek island and live naked on the beach, never listening to the radio ever again.

I got downstairs, to the heart of the beast’s lair, where I found row upon row of long corridors. I ducked into a bathroom and hid in a toilet cubicle. I took out my phone and rang the Joe Duffy show, my heart was in my mouth. If I could get on the air with him, I could let him know I was on my way, he could prepare for my arrival, start to chew through his binds so we could make good our escape as soon as I got there, as soon as I knocked out the show’s producer and crashed through the soundproof window that acted as his cage during the show.

The phone rang and rang and rang; no answer. I tuned my walkman to Joe’s live show…they were in the middle of a break. No doubt they were too busy beating him to come to the phone, making him dance like a bear to Russian accordions, lathering him up with baby oil in anticipation of Gerry Ryan’s arrival, getting the cameras ready so they could stream the event live on YouTube.

I ran through all the corridors, searching for the right studio, I found it after what seemed like an eternity. ‘Liveline’, read the sign on the door, but everyone knew who the real star of the show was.

I burst through the heavy, soundproof door and was faced with a production room of about three people and the studio through the window…and there he was, wearing a wooly jumper and a scraggy beard. He looked in awful shape altogether, he was just staring at me with confused eyes. He continued on with the show, dealing with the mundane problems of whatever crackpot was currently on the line…what a pro he was.

“Joe!!” I called out, but he couldn’t hear me.

“Joe!!” I yelled again, striding purposefully across the room towards the studio…but then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun round to see a security guard looming over me, with a can of tear gas pointed at my face. I didn’t even have a chance to plead my case, I’m sure if I had just explained the situation I would have been let about my business without any hassle, but the last thing I saw was a cloud of noxious gas being sprayed into my eyes and down my open throat. It felt like a box jellyfish had just exploded in my mouth. I collapsed to the ground and took to the fetal position and I cried out loudly.

“Why, Joe, Why?!?” I continued screaming as I was carried out of the room by two large men.

The next thing I knew, I found myself sitting in a cell in the security building of the RTE compound. My mission had come to an end, I had failed. But I lived to try again.

I looked into the cell next to mine; there was another young guy in there.

“What’re you here for?” I asked.

“Pat Kenny” he said.

I just nodded; he didn’t need to say any more, we all know what he meant.

I laid down, hopefully to get some sleep and perchance to dream of Joe…this wouldn’t be my last visit to RTE.