Go Somewhere Else
This site has hit the dust, but you can follow Frank O'Connor's proceedings here:
Seahorse in Love (Funny)
Seahorse Design (Web Design)
Seahorse Cinema (Cinema)
O'Connor's O'Pinions (Art and Culture)
Vivid magazine (Magazine for ex-pats)
February 11th, 2007. | 11:37 am cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: The Site | Permalink
Placebo at the Arenele
Placebo, who have previously shunned Romania as a potential concert venue, were finally persuaded to come with an offer of free mici and beer. They stunned an appreciative crowed with a series of Renaissance and early Byzantine tunes, while Brian Molko showed off his well honed tap dancing skills.
It was a quiet night, and some people complained, but then again, life is unfair, so I don't know what they were whining about, really. They should all cut their hair and get proper jobs in banks.
If you want to see more of Cosmin Bumbut's images of the show, go to Vivid magazine and click the events link on the right hand side of the page. The full gallery is a very cool thing in itself, and it doesn't feel the need to smoke or smash up television sets.
August 15th, 2006. | 4:17 pm cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Music | Permalink
Where am I going? Where have I been?
I haven't posted for a while because the little free time I have remaining is all absorbed by uncyclopedia, where I reside as an alter-ego.
Uncyclopedia seems to be just the place for me to dump my incessant brain-chatter, as bluewyvern pointed out to me a long to ago. And Romania, for some reason, seems to be less absurdly bizarre these days than it used to be - especially under the PSD.
So, if something really amazing and strange happens to me, I'll put it here. In the mean time, here's a picture:
June 13th, 2006. | 12:45 pm cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: The Site | Permalink
Edvard Munch
Yet another Munch painting has been .... stolen!. What is it with Munch and criminals? There seems to be some kind of deep bond between the two, a mysterious genetic connection between existentialism and pilfering, perhaps.
Maybe it's Munch's own fault. A great artist like Michelangelo bares his breast to destiny and shouts "You are DEFEATED by GREATNESS and I SHALL LIVE FOREVER". Munch, on the other hand just sips a cup of tea in the corner and thinks "Gee, I hope this one doesn't get nicked".
Or perhaps there is a complete lack of regard for Munch's works among the art curators of Scandanavia:
Or perhaps there's this one guy who compulsively steals Munch. Maybe because he's normally quite happy and well adjusted, but he worries about that. So he has a secret room in his house full of Screams. That way, when he comes back after a nice evening at the cinema, he can go and make himself worried.
May 27th, 2006. | 10:40 am cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Art | Permalink
The Office of Unfair Reclamations
Knowing, as I do, that I was bound to break out of the boundaries of this humble exercise in gibberish and spread out like a jelly into the lumpen concreticity of the real world, I can announce that my latest exercise in 'comedy' fiction may be found here.
The Office of Unfair Reclamations has recently been described by Salman Rushdie as "Like Kafka meets Bugs Bunny", but then he'll say anything as long as you just go away from his door and leave him alone. Still, it only took 249 days, so I consider this something of an achievement.
May 17th, 2005. | 1:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink
Where was I last night again?
Tags: frame club amnesia
Friday night at the Frame Club, and I'm feeling experimental on the drinks front. Looking through the menu, I note that an 'amnesia' has absinthe, sambuca, blue curacao and other assorted wonders, all in the one glass. So I go to the bar and ask for one of those, plus an Irish coffee for Tia.
The guy makes the Irish coffee like Tom Cruise. He throws the squirty cream up in the air, spins around, catches it behind his back and piles it into the glass with a flourish. You'd never get that in Ireland. I feel like applauding. Then it's the turn of the Amnesia. He asks me:
So, he fills the shot glass like a juggler, lets the stuff spill over into the plate underneath and then lights everything. I'm thinking "My alcohol... my precious... it's going up in smoke". He gets a big glass, puts out the flames, covers the plate and gives me the shot glass and a straw.
So I do, and it's very nice. Then he gives me another straw and puts that in the big glass with the fumes. So I inhale those too. That's even better.
May 13th, 2006. | 10:40 am cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink
Citizen Kong
The latest thing I did for Uncyclopedia: The epic story of the long long rise and very short fall of a 25 foot gorilla.
May 12th, 2006. | 2:30 pm cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink
Walrus on a stick
Tags: norwegian walrus experiment
In 1923, the great Norwegian inventor and tap dancer, Thor Lingus, had the idea of putting walrus on a stick. Up to that point, walrus had not really penetrated the market sector for convenience foods, mostly because they preferred to spend their time laying around on ice floes, grunting and scratching. No one gets far in marketing if they spend all their time doing that - apart from Michael Bolton of course, but then he's got unique hair.
Thor sent a team of walrus capturing experts to wherever walrus happened to live at the time. They brought the walrus back to New York and Thor set up a vending cart in Times Square. He had decided to use cocktail sticks because they are light, portable and allow customers to pick walrus from their teeth after the meal. When the consignment arrived, however, Thor realised his terrible miscalculation. All he had seen up to that point were photographs of Walrus, and he had thought that they were much much smaller - about the size of a golf ball.
Still, Thor wasn't a quitter. With the help of ten other people, he managed to get one Walrus on a cocktail stick and sold it to his first customer for $100, which was a lot of money in those days. Soon, Times Square was filled with city folk all staggering about under Walrus and a number of traffic accidents occured as a result. The police were called and Thor legged it. The experiment has never been repeated, except with hot dogs.
May 8th, 2006. | 8:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink
Doggists
The powerful businessman, bestriding the boardroom like a colossus, but in a suit, is almost certainly a secret doggist. The lowly clerk in the post room, sweeping up wood chips, and humming to himself in an odd way - he is probably a doggist too. Some of your closest friends may even be doggists without you knowing it.
Doggists believe that life is tough because dogs eat each other. Hence the phrase:
Dogs don't eat each other, of course. If they did, then how can we explain the existence of the Chihuahua? Surely they would be the first to go. Next would be the Jack Russell Terrier - and there's billions of them about too. Which is a shame, because they are vicious little bastards, but we all have to let nature take its course, I suppose.
If dogs really ate each other, all we'd see would be a lot of fat, happy, yet evil looking St. Bernards, eyeing us up, wondering if a group kill might be worth it at the pensioner's bus stop.
Spiders, on the other hand do eat each other. But you don't hear people going around explaining the latest hostile take over with:
Doggists, therefore, are a bunch of deluded fuckwits and I want my money back.
May 1st, 2006. | 3:31 pm cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Dogs | Permalink
The happy existentialist's book club
The Bouncy Castle is a novel by Franz Kafka. A rollicking comedy that extends to over 6000 pages, it concerns the exploits of B, an unemployed postman. B wanders all over the Thuringian countryside in search a mysterious long lost bouncy castle. On the way, B meets lots of people, such as the dancing janitor and the keeper of the bells. At first he's happy, but then he realises that all of the people he meets are not real people at all, but just metaphors. This makes him quite dizzy and he has to sit down and have a cup of tea. The bouncy castle itself proves elusive, thus operating simultaneously as a ridiculous narrative device and a symbol of the encroaching fuzziness of Western Kleptocraticism.
If you really want more of this drivel, you can see the whole damned thing I wrote here
April 27th, 2006. | 6:15 pm cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Books | Permalink