andcurve.weblog - The weblog of Kevin Teljeur. Somewhere within all the noise, there is a note you need to hear.

Right, that ‘Phil’ business was entertaining – and so was Garret, from time to time – but it’s dying a death. www.make-phil-and-his-fucking-contraption-history.com. I’m in Romania right now, having a ball, relaxing, enjoying myself, having an actual holiday (I was told they were good, and I thought I’d take the plunge, so to speak) and taking about four thousand photos, you’ll have to sit through some choice cuts before long. I’d put up a photo now except for the fact that this damn Internet cafe doesn’t actually have USB on this computer (This USB business is important because it means I can attach the memory card from my spanking new Canon Digital SLR to the computer and… Well, you’re clever people, you’ll get it.) and it’s pretty slow. I know you’re all going to say something like “Hey you, like what is the fuck this, you know?”; to which I’ll probably reply “Well whatever fuckarse, because, hey, you know.”.

Special shout out to the beautiful, clever and occasionally dubious Oana, who is chaperoning me, owning me, taking care of me and showing me around Romania. Shouts also out to Roxana, who has suggested many clever things to get up to, and the girls of ExamPlus for keeping Oana on her toes and being a generally great bunch of people. I’ll be curious to hear what they thought of ‘Intermission‘ featuring Colin Fucking Farrell which I thought was a reasonable Irish film with contemporary Irish culture, and ‘The General‘ which is a pretty good representation of Ireland in the nineteen eighties.

Anyway, better go. Oana’s getting bored and we have a train to catch from (as she would say, and probably will) a dubious train station, else we’ll be trapped in Sighisoara tonight. I’ll try and post again, but I’ll be back on Wednesday night, and by Saturday you’ll all be wishing I’d stayed here; by then Garret may actually seem like a less painful option after all.

Oh, and one more thing; I finally met Ovideo! It was sheer coincidence, but it was icing on the cake for a great week. It really was.

I have bigger, more important things to post about than this, but… It is funny and seems to have amused a few people so far. Particularly girls! It’s the kind of thing which demonstrates the cultural divide between the skirted boob-carriers and the trousered cock-wielders; interestingly, and largely by pure co-incidence, I got pulled (or forced my way, it’s a moot point at any rate) into a conversation in Kilkenny on Saturday night, at a party, we were all slightly drunk, I’m setting the scene here, bear with me, about gender being a cultural construct. This interesting topic came up because Lise (it’s short for Elisabeth, very important to know that)Lise (who is called Elisabeth in real life; it’s a cultural thing) and Mark (who calls me Chris for some reason) in the cab. Madness ensued shortly afterwards. Click image to view larger version is doing a thesis on this area and had some opinions on the subject to share with group. As usual, so did I, and got stuck in with some opinions of my own, and I’ve actually been thinking about it since. I’ve formed some forceful and no doubt controversial ideas which I’ll happily throw the way of anyone who’ll care to listen, and they’ll get me beaten too. About time, some will say.This single heated conversation had an interesting effect on me in that since then I’ve been thinking more clearly, articulating myself much better and generally been using my mind a bit more. I had, I think, been getting a little complacent. Aren’t young people fantastic?
Props to Lise! I’ll sum up my view as this; I have a cock. It is not the biggest cock there is, it isn’t always the most reliable of cocks, and certainly not the most beautiful, but it is and always has been there, and I’ve always known what it is there for. Now, I’ll admit that use of it wasn’t something that came naturally to me, but that’s just some technical stuff. I’ve always known what I’ve wanted to do with it, and with girls. I wasn’t taught that. I wasn’t taught to have a cock, and cute pair of nuts to go with it. This is because I am male, and it’s part of the package; I know some males realise early on that the skirted boob-carriers are not for them, but that’s not a cultural thing either, they just know from day one that they are benders and that’s the way it is (I’m not a bender, by the way, in case that wasn’t clear. But each to their own. I’m sure Brokeback Mountain is a great movie.). And the same goes for girls who don’t like the the trousered cock-wielders. Mind you, many a time you can’t blame them really. But being facetious and deliberately offensive aside, my point is that these are not learned things. I am what I am, you are what you are, and these things are decided in a large part by your genes.This whole area of discussion is not unrelated to the very politically incorrect and sensitive discussion about race; suffice to say, some human population groups are genetically predisposed to be better at certain things (by and large) than others. These ‘things’ can be a little nebulous, but sport is a good example of what I’m talking about here, and I won’t go into it any further because it’s a tricky one which I can’t tackle lightly without a little research.

So, all that said, there are certain things which while in theory they are cultural issues, I think that evolution and the biology of gender means that there are things which women can’t understand. At all. If you went back in time (or to New Zealand) and explained the offside rule to Maximus Decimus Meridias then I think you’ll find that he would find the time (in between defeating the Germanic hordes) to say “Ah yes, of course, that’s entirely reasonable. Good idea, too!” and he’d be right. It’s a man thing. Girls… Well, you know, the offside rule. That’s the way it is.

This came up when having to explain ‘cock-blocking’ to a finite but seemingly endless number of Romanian women after some of the frenzied commenting on my previous post regarding my going to teach Engleza in Romania, where I had to use the term (in jest, of course) about the women who teach in… It’s a long story. Read the post and the comments to see what I mean. Anyway, here’s my explanation, if you don’t like the semi-official version.

If a guy has an interest in a girl and is trying to chat her up then the cock-block is an attempt to foil the chat up, usually by a friend of the girl (male or female). Sometimes it’s a friend of the guy, who himself has an interest in the girl, or is just very socially inept. If the guy doing the cock-blocking is a friend of the girl, then he is probably cock-blocking in order to keep the girl to himself. On the other hand, if it’s a girl, then she is misguidedly trying to protect her friend from having a good time (or she wants the guy to herself).

Now, entirely hypothetically, let’s say I express an interest in Angela, who is a friend of my friend Jen. However, Jen isn’t happy about this, because she doesn’t want me to get lucky with Angela (perhaps, because it would be awkward, especially if I was only interested in Angela for casual sex), so Jen has to do something to prevent me from getting Angela’s attention. For example, she might loudly ask me in front of Angela if my syphillis has cleared up yet, or if my wife is coming over to join us. Of course, there is the bungled cock-block, whereby for example, Jen may try to block me by saying to Angela “Dude! He’s so not clever, he just lost €9,000 in a stupid investment in some company!”. But Angela might think that there must be more where that came from and be encouraged rather than discouraged… Thus a bungled cock-block. Dude! This would make it very hard for me to ‘get lucky’ with Angela, hence the term ‘cock-block’, because my cock has almost literally been blocked.

Well, I thought I should share these thoughts with group. I’ve been beavering away on posts to finish the Vienna trip write-up (with some truly scandalous and epic stuff in there), the Devon trip write-up (complete with pillow-heads) and Kenny’s birthday. And now also the epic Kilkenny trip, as well as a million other things I’ve seen, done and farted in the general direction of over the last few weeks. I have to finish Keith’s site too, for then I will have a third site out there which I’ve built on top of WordPress, the same fantastic free software which makes this site possible…

(edited on 19th April 2006 to add the bungled scenario. Pretty important possibility, I believe.)

Well, it’s been a good Christmas. Uneventful, too much tv, a lot of sleeping and some time with family. what more could I ask of a Christmas? Conor (my ‘little’ brother) picked me up on Christmas morning and brought me back to his and Deirdre’s house, and just after we arrived our mother arrived too. So it was a slow easy day. I got a phone message from Tee (she obviously wasn’t able to get through because of the shit reception), so I was a little sad that I’d missed that, but basically I had little contact with anyone. I’m pretty particular about keeping Christmas day for family.

I’m not big into the presents (I’d prefer a gift-free Christmas, personally), but I got some nice books. I got some books for them too.

Our father didn’t make it out; when my mother stopped in on her way from her new home in County Wexford to collect him from Bray it seemed that his legs didn’t work so he couldn’t come (he’s an alcoholic, and every now and again it causes malnutrition, because he doesn’t eat which makes him lame. That, and because he’s too drunk to eat.). By the end of the day, I’d decided that he was actually putting it on. Every Christmas it’s a bit of a tradition that he makes a play for getting everyone’s attention by whatever means neccessary, so this year he put on the ‘failing health’ routine so we’d still be thinking of him, in spite of him not being arsed to make it out. I’ve really had enough of it at this stage, so I have no sympathy. He needs a good hiding, not a doctor.

I went to hospital for a medical issue of my own last Friday, a colonoscopy or somesuch proceedure. I had previously been pretty cagey about it, and here and there in previous postings you might have found some references to some vague, undefined medical worry. I’ve been to the doctor a few months ago and then to the hospital for a preliminary examination a few weeks ago, and this was the final part: I’ll be blunt about it, they knocked me out and took a guided tour of my colon with a camera. It wasn’t much fun, I can tell you. Actually, I woke up somewhere in the middle of it all and was able to watch it happen on the screen they used, but I could have imagined it and either way they knocked me out again and I woke up a couple of hours later off my head and oddly enough with a pretty hefty erection (Normally welcome, but not under those circumstances. Must have been the tranquilisers.). I think the biscuits and water they gave me put paid to that. It usually does. And that was that. They gave me tea and toast too (I didn’t want it but they gave it too me anyway, probably because my refusal came out as something along the lines of “Mmwehhh hrrr vvvwuhg”) and then Garret and Nora collected me, for a day of Kev-sitting and adventure. Jesus, I really was out of it earlier that day, and I’m glad I had someone keep an eye on me, there’s no knowing what I might have gotten up to without someone keeping an eye on me.

Christmas Eve was… Well, here’s the thing. Every year up until now, without fail, and Christmas in Australia excepted because I was in the middle of nowhere with no money to spend, and no-one to spend it on (aww), I’ve left my Christmas shopping until the last possible minute and then done it all generally on Christmas Eve or the day before that. Bedlam. However, this year I did it last week which is new. I had nothing to worry about this weekend apart from some grocery shopping, and maybe wrapping the presents (which I abandoned anyway as being pointless). Is it because I’ve finally grown up? I’ve finally gotten laid and had an adult relationship? Or is it the influence of living out in Los Blancheles as a Yuppie, and sharing with the hyperkinetic organised Annette? Time will tell, but it was very nice to have nothing to worry about the day before Christmas.

That was good because the week before was pretty hectic, what with the hospital visit on Friday, having flown to England and back on Tuesday (which took it out of Ciaran and myself, it’s lot to fit into a day), and a generally hard week in the office. Was there other stuff? Oh yes, some socialising too, I met up with Caroline, Michelle, Clare, Liam and Michael on Monday night for our annual Kris Kindle, which was great, not least because it sometimes seems like I haven’t seen them in many, many long months. Too many, and I can’t believe I’m too busy to see them more often.

The weekend before is something I’ll cover in a separate post, because it includes the big Company Christmas Party, and a visit to Garret and Nora, all big adventurous events with photos attached.

Here’s something I’ve noticed; Paramount Comedy 1, on NTL Cable here in Dublin, is basically showing cheap lousey porn after a certain hour and dressing it up as comedy. It’s pretty weird, actually. They show porn with a ‘comedy’ soundtrack and it’s not too hardcore, but still… To offset it, RTE showed ‘Evelyn’, where Pierce ’007′ Brosnan tries to play a Dublin man,trying to rescue his kids from adoption. It’s really a waste of space.

‘Minority Report’ is still a beautiful-looking piece of film-making, by the way. Even if he’s inclined to making feel-good pap every once in a while, Spielberg is still a damn fine director. And indeed, maker of movies generally. It’s a good time of the year for movies on the tellybox.

Either of my regulars notice the style changes on the site? No? I’ll have to wrap a lot of posting loose ends this week (I have heaps of leftovers, unfinished posts, etc), do my yearly round-up and maybe do something clever with photos, like I did at the end of 2002… Anyone remember that?

Photos to follow.