Living Free

Credit: Squatter's Arrest by Photochiel on flickr

There’s a man learning French in the corner, mimicking the rudimentary commands of his native-speaking companion. “Assis-toi! Restez!” he barks. He’s learning because his Parisian teacher is returning home for a short holiday, and he’s offered to look after her francophone dog in her absence. “Assis! Restez!… What’s French for: ‘off the couch’?”

I’m watching all this happen in the kitchen of an East London squat, home to 18 people of various nationalities and notions. Outside, in the garden, a mixed group sip beer and bicker over political theorists I’ve never heard of. Above me, sunbathing on the flat roof, I can hear an equally bickersome Lithuanian couple debating whose turn it is to cook dinner. None of these people have any legal right to reside here, though most have called this place home for almost a year now.

To Find Yourself on the Stage

Credit: Khalida Aderogba

There are plenty of inspiring places to interview a burlesque star, especially a rising talent like Ms Harlot DeVille. Under the white-hot bulbs of her dressing room mirror, perhaps? Or in the shadow of the stage where she stoops to tease and conquer?

If you’re really, really lucky, she might just speak to you from her very own bedroom.

Back from the Dead

P: Mr T in DC on flickr

I’ve just spent a very nice month on the arts desk of the Financial Times, doing work experience for my journalism course. Towards the end, they asked me to write up “The List”, a weekly 4/500 word thing that can be on absolutely anything, but preferably topical. Little things like ’5 fictional languages’ or ’5 unusual flags’, fun stuff.

So I wrote it, and I filed it. And then I got a very nice, very sweet chat from the editor, who was very complimentary but asked if I could try again and come up with something less… *long pause* “offensive.”

Three Good Reads for Wednesday

A tourist captures the exact moment the earthquake hit Christchurch, NZ. Credit to @GrantyGrant on twitter

“Boxpark basically tells corporations that they can come along and sell to this market without really understanding it or investing in its future. It is a retail smash-and-grab, and will leave no legacy when it leaves beyond another empty site awaiting redevelopment in Shoreditch.”

Kieran Long dismantles the planned Box Park for Shoreditch.

“Some guy will use a phrase that you have never heard before. And when you go on Urban Dictionary, look up “photo wrecker” and read the description—”A retarded or disabled person”—you will sob. Because you’re furious and you’re dejected. And because for the first time in your life, you fear how people may one day treat your son when you are not around to protect him.”

The mother of a child with special needs wages a one woman twitter campaign to fight the R word.

And not so much a read as a morally questionable meme:

Living the Sheen dream.

This evening has mostly been about

…stealing youtube links from my friend Adam’s facebook. This however, is unlikely to be beaten.

What kind of country do you want?

Photo Credit: @alanearly on twitter

I was raised in blissful ignorance of party politics. While some families in my village practically stapled elections posters to their toddlers’ cheruby cheeks, the trees and telegraph poles outside our house remained unmolested. My parents, for whatever reason, refused to tell me how they voted, or where their allegiances lay. By keeping schtum, they saved me from one of our nations’ many curses – political tribalism.

They couldn’t, unfortunately, save me from that other Irish plague. As a recent emigrant, (and as I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing) I don’t have a vote in tomorrow’s election. But this ballot will shape the country I hope to one day return to, so in this small space I’d like to add my voice to that conversation.

I’d like to start, by saying a big fat thank you to Lucinda Creighton. Her comments on gay marriage rights have done us a number of favours, but more than anything, they’ve reminded everyone where Fine Gael stand on some important issues. Creighton is the Fine Gael spokesperson for Equality, who thinks convenience of reproduction is enough to deny certain rights to certain citizens, and would prefer if we all said no more about it. She’s a blue-in-the-face blue-shirt, sick and tired of repeating herself to you pesky voters.

Light/Shade

Look! Look what humans can do!

(First video via @fionnkidney on twitter, second via Panti’s blog)

This pissed up baby is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time

Bringing up Gaga

Anyone who has suffered little children knows that most are born with a clarity and focus of will that many adults would kill for. They have a boundless energy and a wonderful, utterly manipulative imagination that you rarely see in adults outside of Bond villains. If adults could only hold onto that perfect sense of self, as Dylan Moran once observed,  we could achieve anything.

The thing is, kids can also be bloody annoying. You’ll know what I mean if, as a teenager, you were left in charge of human beings who had just graduated from adorable infant status. If you haven’t been emotionally invested in keeping them out of the fireplace for the first few years of their life, then their wilful mood swings can be a bit trying.

As, to the casual observer, can Lady Gaga. Her public outing at Sunday’s Grammys saw her arrive in a glass coffin, followed by implantation in a giant translucent egg. Hoisted aloft and carried up the red carpet by models, Gaga ignored all assembled and eventually arrived on stage, emerging from this ovum to perform her new song. A symbolic act apparently, of her rebirth as an artist.

Fair enough. Her new single gets acres of press and for most people it reconfirms the Crazy Gaga image that sells so well. But if I was famous, I’d just be happy to avoid the red carpet. All the bleating fashion platitudes and endless photographs. Much better to ditch the designer threads and go as a Kinder Surprise. For her part, Katy Perry showed up in a fair of beautifully ornate angel wings, but next to Gaga she looked like an accountant at the art college ball. In celebrity land these days, if you want to succeed, succeed big.

There now follows a party political saucy wink…

Image Credit: @SwannyNook on Twitter

Can you feel it? The love in the air? Like a starry-eyed medical affliction that won’t shift until you’ve bought roses from a wandering tramp, outside an over-priced but underwhelming restaurant.

Hell, even the political parties are getting in on it. This Valentine’s day, you can opt to forgo the hackneyed chocolates, flowers, and candle-lit tension, and treat your lover to a party political broadcast instead. From those old softies in Fine Gael, no less.