• My dad found an ammunition dump in the canal (drained at the time) behind my parents’ house, including guns, grenades and a live bombshell, the latter of which he picked up, carried 200 feet and threw in our garden. The army had to do a controlled explosion on it. The dump was dated back to the 1920s and assumed to be an abandoned IRA stash. 
• Body in briefcase: Three eastern Europe guys tortured and murdered a girlfriend-beating Russian man, crammed his body in a briefcase and threw it in the canal behind my folks’ house. 
• In the early 1990s I was kept awake for a week because I thought I could hear a horse neighing every night. I began to suspect I was losing my mind. Eventually the mystery was solved when the police discovered my neighbour was keeping a fully grown horse in their living room. 
• When I was twenty seven I moved into a tiny bedsit a few houses up the road from my parents place. It was in a house divided into four flats. It proved too expensive for me, so I left after three months. A couple of years later three women murdered and African man in the flat that would have been next to mine. They hacked his body up and threw it in the canal I mentioned previously. His head was never found. The Irish media dubbed them The Scissor Sisters. 

Related: I have since moved from that neighbourhood. 

Nothing ever happens at hotel bars
You won’t do any talking
You won’t see any stars
You won’t meet a lady
Who likes who you are
Because nothing ever happens at hotel bars. 

Nothing ever happens at hotel bars 
You won’t make some friends
Who travelled there from far
And you won’t feel any better
After cigarettes and tar
Because nothing ever happens at hotel bars.

Nothing ever happens at hotel bars
Drink all that you want
but it will never heal your scars
You won’t see the horizon
Or the distant glint of Mars
Because nothing ever happens at hotel bars. 
 

I gazed at her for a few seconds and licked my lips. “Remove my sleeve and pierce my film” she said. I stabbed her several times with my shiny metal fork and popped her in the microwave for 3 minutes on high. She came out steamy.

While standing on a chair a couple of weeks ago, I slipped and fell backwards onto a tiled floor. I was in the garage at the office and I had to stand on the chair to reach a door bolt. It’s hard to gauge the distance I fell, but I’d guess my head travelled at least ten feet before introducing itself to the floor at high velocity. 

But the thing I can’t forget is that I experienced an amazing time dilation. As I was falling, this is exactly what I thought: ”…Shit there’s nothing I can grab on to to stop this…. I’m just going to have to fall…. Hmm… This is taking ages… So this is what it’s like to experience time slowing down… … … This is incredible…. I think I’m going to hit the floor soon… OK I need to try to relax….”

BANG.

Luckily when I landed on the tiles my tail-bone, hip, and skull took most of the hit. Wait did I say luckily? I meant painfully. 

Still, an amazing experience. 

I tried my hardest. I wrote the best lyrics I could write, with the best chords I could come up with and I gigged those songs with the best musicians I could find. I did this for 13 years.

Nothing happened.

All the gig venues stayed small. All the mailed out demos remained unanswered. All the Hot Press reviews remained unwritten. Despite trying everything I could think of, despite trying harder than I had ever tried at anything I had ever done, nothing happened. Slowly the flame went out, until eventually I had to admit I was sitting in the dark.

I realised that despite what I’d been taught by numerous inspirational movies, sometimes you try your hardest and nothing happens. Sometimes you’re just not good enough. So I decided to stop before I started to embarrass myself. That’s what you have to do I think: Stop, and if you have enough heart left in you, trim the gray hairs, shave the balding head, and try be something else. Learn to live with the fact that you need to make your dreams smaller.

People who are members of organised religions, let’s say Christianity, live with such spectacularly blinkered vision*, that I just can’t fathom how they never notice. It’s like there’s a truck hurtling at them from the side at 120 miles an hour, flashing it’s lights, roaring it’s engines, beeping it’s horn, ripping up trees and sending thrash cans flying through windows but they think “Well I can’t see it directly on front of me, so I’m just going to ignore that noise and continue standing rooted to this spot.”

Here’s a case in point. 

According to Wikipedia, 94.6% of Thais are Buddhists. With a population of roughly 61 million people, this means that in Thailand there are approximately 57,706,000 Buddhists (these figures are very rough, Thailand’s last census was in 2000, but that doesn’t make any difference to my point).

What is the main reason there are 57,706,000 Buddhists living in Thailand? (*Hint* It’s not because 57 million Thais educated themselves in all religions and decided Oh hell yeah Buddhism! That’s the one for me! Bring on the Saṃsāra baby!). The main reason 51 million Thais are Buddhists is because they were born in Thailand and Buddhism is the predominant religion.

That same reason can be applied everywhere. Look at Ireland. The main reason I was a “catholic kid” is because I was born in Ireland, to catholic parents, as was most likely because 92% of Irish are Catholic. 

So let’s get hypothetical here. Say you took a random Irish catholic man (the personality, the individual) and instead of him being born in Ireland fixed it so he was born in Thailand, to a Thai family. Do you think he would have been a Catholic? Of course not, it just wouldn’t have happened, he’d have been Buddhist.

I don’t get it. I don’t get how, say, an American Christian could hear that 57 million Thais are Buddhists and think “Hmm. That’s a bit odd. 57 million of them huh? Well the 57 million of them must be wrong. Why? Well they’re wrong because my God saw fit to have ‘em born over there in Thailand. I don’t know why, he’s just a mysterious fucker like that. Sucks for them though, whatareyagonnado? Lucky me I’m American so I got the right one; zap me up Jesus!”

I think about this every time I meet a priest, or a nun or just a plain old Christian or Jew. I want to say: You know why you’re the religion you are don’t you? It’s because you were born where you were born. You know if you’d been born in Yemen you’d be have been Muslim right? Does that not set off an alarm in your head? Does that not make you think? **

I think it’s probable that most religious people just don’t think about it. Or ignore it. They slap on the religious blinkers and stare half blind ahead. Me personally I think I’ll get myself a bumper sticker made up that reads “Safe driver! Fear not! I’ve got freedom of vision because I’ve taken off the Jesus blinkers!”

*Blinkered vision: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blinkered
(Blinkers are also known as blinders or winkers) 

**Before you say it: Yes I know some people switch religions. But the percentage is so small that it makes no difference to my point.

It’s an odd ol’ thing. I’ve been abusing it for years, going to bed at 4am, getting up at 9.53am to start work at 10am. Napping from 1pm to 2pm. Work some more. Another nap from 6pm to 7pm. Ad-hoc micro napping. Gorilla slumbering. Sporadic snoozing.

This had been pretty much my cycle for 6 bleary years. And it worked well for me. I’d made my peace with it. I’d become a sort of human-cat hybrid except without their cuteness, flexibility, sharp vision, fur (mostly) and ability to always land on my feet (usually land on my face).

But now I have a DAY JOB. It’s goodbye working from home, goodbye flexi-time, goodbye midday naps, and hello commuting misery, hello mornings cold enough to slice your extremities off, hello workmates who come in to cough and sneeze all over you, and to top it off…. I have to get to bed by midnight. Midnight! What am I, 9 years old? NOW I remember why everyone complains about it. You get home, eat, scratch your ear, then it’s time for bed. WhatInTheWhatNow? Where’s my Travors time gone?! Where’s my life gone?! Where are my pants gone?*

Meh. I’d probably only waste it anyway (Ref: My 20s).

*Possibly unrelated.