Joe Biden in Ireland

Cynicism.  It is often scorned and derided in what is, ironically, an act of cynicism. But cynicism is underrated. It’s an alternative path to simply giving up. A reason to stay engaged. A calice developed to protect against disappointment. But sometimes, something will happen to disappoint the cynic inside. And I’ve forgotten the name of the feeling that comes over me when my cynic is silenced.

Joe Biden is in Ireland. My home town. I’d say home-country, but it’s pretty small. He is here on a four day trip, ostensibly to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, a quietly remarkable piece of paper that has managed to keep extremists from shooting for a quarter of a century. It needs a push to stay alive and that’s one of the reasons that Air Force One touches down on Irish soil in the middle of a rain-sodden April. 

The real reason Cousin Joe is here, I’ve decided, is to have a photo op with what seem to be the hundreds of thousands of cousins he’s traced here. Hard working, salt of the earth men and women that are delighted to find that they’re related to this US President and quietly relieved that they’re not related to the other mad fellah. They get their picture taken with him. Their kids, juxtaposed between tooth loss and freckle gain, get their picture taken with him. His dog, the one who bites people, is probably related to our dogs; dogs get their picture taken with him. 

Ireland is a photo op. Cousin Joe is touring his way across the country posing in a million photos that we will post on our facebook and instagram accounts. Our American cousins will see the posing. And they might just vote for Cousin Joe in the next election. Cousin Joe is a politician, after all. My inner cynic has spoken.

Ireland has had a long love affair with US presidential visits. Obama came here to discover the missing apostrophe in his surname. Clinton came to play a round of golf and they built an honest-to-God statue of him playing golf. Reagan came and had a pint in Ballyporeen. Later, the entire pub was bought and transported to the Reagan Presidential Library. And then there was Kennedy. He came and we swooned. My father used to tell me that the cathedral in Dublin had two photographs framed on the wall; one of the Pope and one of JFK, two rivals for the title of Catholic-in-Chief. 

Cousin Joe is going to Ballina in County Mayo, where his ancestors came from. And he’s going to give a speech in front of St. Murdoch’s Cathedral, no doubt hoping that our American cousins will see him posed with a cathedral and think that he’s a safer vote than whatever heathen he’s up against in the election. 

This I can’t miss. He is due to speak at nine. I jump into my car and drive four hours across to Ballina, on the Irish west coast. My cynic wants to be there. Assess the size of the required cynical response in person.

*

The queue is long. Very long. The first security screening queue I join seems to be about a kilometer long. I join another one, a mere pup of a queue at four hundred meters. The woman in front of me in the queue is talking to a much, much older gentleman about the problems with ‘getting me tubes tied’. The couple behind me are convinced that every bus or fancy car that passes the queue is either the man himself or a ‘decoy’. They are clearly missing the point about Cousin Joe: his greatest political skill has always been to be his own decoy. There is an announcement – no drinks, no food, no vaping. Have your pockets emptied. A man about three people in front of me is holding a full pint of guinness. He seems worried, looks from side to side and, rather than let a good pint do to waste, quaffs it down in three unenjoyable swallows. His partner takes the glass from him and places it by the kerb. “Be sure to check your pockets for shite, now”, she says. “Get all of that shite out of your pockets.” He fumbles some nondescript materials from his pockets onto the road before they reach the head of the line.

Soon it is my turn.  I reach the tent where security searches are being conducted. A man, perhaps 25 years old in body but with an age decreed by the US constitution grabs me by the shoulder and leans in to my ear. “Sir – your fly is unzipped.” He did it discreetly. He must be Secret Service.

I make my way to the banks of the River Moy and its low stone walls. Across the river is the Cathedral. The stage is prepped. There are thousands of people filing in. It is only 6pm – another three hours to go to Cousin Joe. In a blatant act of socialism, free American and Irish flags are being handed out. People are elbow wrestling to get a good spot to hear the speech. The air smells faintly of cheap hamburgers with a soupçon of greasy chips smothered in curry sauce; the scentscape of a good Irish day out. 

I ramble around the quays. Ballina isn’t a Disney-Ireland town. It is a town that is a survivor. It has a character that tells you it has survived for the last three hundred years because it has chosen to. It has survived wars, famines, recessions and emigrations. But it perseveres. The river Moy tears angrily through the town on its way to the nearby Atlantic Ocean. This is the 300th anniversary of Ballina being incorporated as a town. That sounds old. But it is only 3.75 Biden units. 

*

Music is playing. First The Academic, then the unfortunately-titled but always entertaining Coronas. The Ballina rain pours, the harsh cold wind pings the droplets hard against my skin. But everyone is in a decent mood. They know why they’re here. They know that they’re a giant photo op. But it’s not every day that the Roman Emperor comes through your town. I was in Dublin for the Obama speech back in 2011. It was very memorable, but precisely what we all expected. He talked about his Irish ancestors with a glint in his eye that said he knew it all to be hocum. But he never broke character. He said some words in Irish and we all felt better about ourselves that he had noticed us. I expect the people of Ballina know what’s coming.

The first hint that the evening may be extra-twee comes during the Corona’s last song. As they sing, the rain stops, the clouds break and a double rainbow appears, perfectly framing the set with the cathedral right in the middle. A thousand cameras are foisted upwards to honour the weather gods. “A feckin’ double rainbow,” I hear a woman beside me say to her young son. “The Yanks will lap that up.”

Soon, former Irish President Mary Robinson takes the stage. She is from Ballina. The stage is directly across the river from her childhood bedroom in what is now the Mary Robinson Centre. The crowd is feeling pretty good since the double rainbow appeared. Mary Robinson tells the crowd that she wants to read them a poem – The Emigrant Irish – by Eavan Boland. Ah Jaysus, I think to myself. Don’t read them a poem. They’ll hate it. I know this because of my own failed poetry attempts. It’s hard to win a crowd of thirty over with a poem. But a crowd of thirty-thousand?

“Like oil lamps,” she begins, “we put them out the back/of our houses, of our minds. We had lights better than, newer than and then/a time came, this time and now/we need them.”

A hush fell over the crowd. A genuine hush. There was a complete silence. People were listening to the poem and throwing the sugar at it that it deserved. My inner cynic is rattled at this revelation, that an Irish crowd will still give a steady ear to a careful poem. 

*

It is after eight. There is still no sign of Cousin Joe. The crowd is in good spirits, however, and the burger vans are doing a roaring trade. To keep the audience in a good mood, the surviving members of the Chieftains reunite to do one last set. And they are good. Very good. I hear a group of twenty-somethings standing near me describe each tune as ‘A banger’. They’re not wrong.

The rain falls again, drenching us all for just long enough to make us wet. But the crowd doesn’t care. It has stood here for three hours, drenched, cold, windswept, and beaten into submission. As I stand around looking at thousands of Irish people clapping their hands and stomping their feet to Tuair dom do Lamh, my inner cynic has an epiphany. Leo Varadkar, our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) had promised Cousin Joe that crowds of Irish people would come out to see him. Crowds had, indeed, come. But the hours of brutal weathering had finally cracked open our 21st century carapaces and revealed the clapping, stomping come-all-ye hootenanny Irish beneath. That’s why Cousin Joe is taking so long. The Ballina weather needed a few hours to draw out our inner Paddy. A Varadkarian master plan. Now – finally – after ten – with the sun having set, with the cathedral lit up like a rare Irish summer, with the crowds more Irish than a freckled potato – on he comes – Cousin Joe – to a backdrop of white lasers filling the sky like a 1950s movie about the Resurrection. Saint Patrick may be the Patron Saint of Ireland, but here, revealed in front of us, is Cousin Joe – the Patron Saint of Being Irish. Although my inner cynic knows what’s really going on here, I enjoy the spectacle none the less. A president is a great fairground attraction, after all.

Cousin Joe takes to the podium and starts to speak. He speaks about his Ballina ancestors, the Blewitts. He talks about how they worked in the quarry that delivered the stone to build the cathedral behind him. He talks about Irish history. He talks about JFK. He talks about the role of peace in a modern world. And he reflects on how unlikely it is that he, the descendent of a family from Ballina, would be the inheritor and inhabitor of the greatest office on the planet. Cousin Joe, a local boy done well, returning to his homeland in Ballina to see if people were proud of him.

I wait for the glint. I wait for the knowing  wink that says ‘I know that none of this is real and I’m only here for a photo op – but play along with me, because you’ll get a photo op too.”

…but it doesn’t come. I look around. The locals are responding in a way that I hadn’t expected. They aren’t frenzied. They aren’t winking. They are, instead, nodding back to say ‘Well done, Joe. You’ve done us proud.” Suddenly, it dawns in me: I am the only lonely cynic here.

There may be a photo op. There may be political overtones to the visit. But that’s not why Joe Biden has spent four days in Ireland. He is here because he wants to be and because we want him to be. He is is a descendent of immigrants from this place – people that had left over a hundred years ago – but that never forgot where they came from. Cousin Joe is here to tell them that it worked out. You may fall down on your luck. You may come from a place that has wars, famines, poverty. It’s not easy, but you can start again. Sometimes it might even take a few generations to get back on your feet. But don’t give up. 

My inner cynic is disappointed. Cousin Joe, it turns out, may be a human behind that political curtain after all. Knowing this makes me feel … I’ve forgotten what it’s called. But it’s not cynicism. 

So Donald Trump is about to be sworn in as President. Fancy that. Here’s a children’s poem I’ve written about him.

Trumpulous Trump

 

Have you heard of the trumpulous trump?

Replete with its trumpulous hair?

And using its trumpulous language

With trumpulous words formed to scare?

 

It lives in a trumpulous building

With a trumpulous solid gold door

With trumpulous gold on the ceilings

And trumpulous rugs on the floor.

 

And he’s building a trumpulous border

To trumple on drugs, crime and guns.

‘Cos while good fences make for good neighbours,

Great walls make for trumpulous ones.

 

The trumpulous Trump is doesn’t judge you –

Doesn’t care if your decisions are rash.

Your trumpulous poverty doesn’t matter as much

As the amount of your trumpulous cash.

 

Now, if you’re not a trumpulous woman,

He won’t understand what you’re at.

He might treat you in a trumpulous fashion

Or grab on to your trumpulous cat.

 

So resistance is trumpulously futile

As is obstruction and subterfuge,

Because the trumpulous Trump is in charge now

And the trumpulous future is Huge.

 

So prepare for your rights to be trumpled,

And for respect to end up on the floor,

And for waves of kids in trumpulous wigs

When you open the Halloween door.

 

But don’t despair of this trumpulous era –

Or get lost in the trumpulous maze –

Because the world may only be trumpulous

For fourteen hundred and sixty one days.

A Short Story

 

Frankenbracket

Preface

Howya Sis-

Drove to the Northside today – to finally see The Great Furniture Shop for myself. Saw the craziest thing in the carpark. A man – couldn’t tell if he looked either in desperate need of a drink or in desperate need to stop – pushing a trolley thing on the path outside the shop. On the trolley was the biggest feckin’ set of shelves I’ve ever seen. I have no idea how far he’d pushed them – but they were a monster of a thing. He was struggling – exhausted like – he just keeled over when I was looking at him. A couple of us stopped to see if he was alright. I bought him some meatballs and, eventually, he came around a bit and started talking a bit. Went on a lot about how he’d ‘lost everything’. He then told me a story – a crazy story. I tried to make him feel better – was going to tell him that he still had his health – but changed mid-sentence after looking at him again. I ended up saying “You still have your … shelves”. Bad idea. “Where are they!” he shouted like a maniac. I pointed out the window to where they were … but they were gone. Probably taken by some of the local kids for a bonfire or something. But yer man just slowly stood up – still looking out the window – and said “I go to seek the shelves that fled from me.” Two lads at the next table had been listening and started laughing at him to themselves. But then he was gone.

Anyway – that was my day. How are you? Did they get all of the tumor?

Chat soon,

Wally.

*

Nodin Orbis was was by birth a Dubliner but by Zodiac sign and an accident of birth both a Leo and a Pisces. His parents were wealthy to the point of financial paralysis and couldn’t pay for his education or upbringing. They did the next best thing and sent him off to be raised by an old woman who had a donkey they were rather fond of because of his name (which they had forgotten). The old woman didn’t have much in the way of possessions and Nodin slept in a drawer until he was eighteen years old – though much of that was broken up into nightly instalments.

When Nodin was of age, he sallied into the world (mainly forth) to seek his fortune, not remembering where he had left it. His parents had died – mainly from fatalities – but had willed to him enough money for him to buy a penthouse suite in Manhattan – which equated, in boom-time Dublin, to enough money for a one bedroom bedsit in Rathmines – and their old furniture – filled, as it was, with memories and loose change – which, when found, became memories of loose change.

Nodin’s bedsit was rather simple by design and complicated in its simplicity. He had inherited his parent’s bed and, once they had been removed from it, it had proved quite comfortable. Beside the small kitchenette was his parent’s old kitchen table – which held many fond memories for him (he and the table had twice visited the circus together). But comfortable though the bedsit was, it lacked proper storage.

Nodin, having grown up sleeping in a drawer, had harboured dreams of inheriting the drawer unit from the old woman when she died. Unfortunately, however, he wanted nothing to do with it when he discovered she had been keeping the donkey inside the drawers. He just didn’t want to have to pull an old woman’s ass out of her drawers.

But what would he do? There was a space that cried out for … for something. Shelves. A drawer unit. Even a china cabinet. Nodin looked high and low for the right piece of furniture to augment and complete his bedsit and, by extension, his life. But he couldn’t find what he was looking for. The more he looked and the less he found, the more frustrated he became. What started one day as a doodle on the kitchen table (the drawing, hygienic kind) morphed into a rudimentary plan for a storage unit. Soon, there were plans strewn all across his table. He became obsessed. By night he’d draw and by day he’d also draw. He began to look in shops to find a unit that matched his plans, but nowhere lived up to his expectations. Chauffeured to near madness, Nodin hatched upon a plan that to a normal human would seem vile and repugnant – but, to the insanity porridge he now called a brain, seemed perfectly normal: He would buy several sets of shelves and hack them together into the ultimate storage leviathan. “I’ll build my own!”, he declared with all the excitement of a freshly barked dog realising that barking is repeatable.

*

In the dark of night, people passing on the footpath below the bedsit window could see a dim light illuminating the shades. Occasionally, the shadow of a man could be glimpsed – moving – hauling geometric shapes – working. Those who lived in the building could hear things – grim sawings – purposeful hammerings – the resonant scrape of heavy furniture dragged unwillingly across a wooden floor. Many thought he must be building something in there – especially since the sign on his door said “I’m building something in here”.  What was he up to? For three weeks, Nodin remained inside his bedsit without setting a foot outside. Hands occasionally. Head strangely often. But never a foot. His beard had grown long – especially since he had outsourced its growing to a local Mufti. He now received regular photos of its progress and felt somehow manlier.

And then Nodin’s hammer fell silent. He had finished. His eyes fixed upon the grotesque form standing in the middle of his floor. “Storage,” he whispered. “I have storage”. His heart swelled with pride and excessive cholesterol.

The piece of furniture consisted of elements of fifteen different shelving units. A main trunk – originally a pine-laminate book-case – provided seven shelves. A smaller set of display shelves – yellow – were fixed on at the side at the top and at an angle. The base was once an elegant white shoe rack – not quite as wide as the book case – but wide enough for a three foot shoe and a pair of side-stacked flip flops. Affixed to the other side was a long thin red unit designed for a child’s bedroom. And on the back, a funky retro orange shelf unit that didn’t look sturdy enough to store anything heavier than a gentleman’s watch or maybe some pilchards. Some pieces had been put together with hands that were clearly expertised in something else. Other pieces had been sewn roughly together in the manner that an unskilled blacksmith might sew a pigskin football to a miniature schnauzer.

But it was missing something. It didn’t look … lively enough. Nodin took out a small paint brush, stencils and some decals. A Fleur de Lis decal made it look elegant, he thought – but not yet there. He painted on some red go-faster stripes onto the main book case. Better. And then he had a flash of brilliance. Working with the tiny paint brush and yellow glitter paint, Nodin painted on a prominent (though off centre) lightning bolt that any five year old double amputee would be proud of. He stepped back and, with drama and aplomb, threw his arms into the air. “It’s Alive!”

*

The unit was so monstrous in size that it dominated his entire bedsit. Nodin attempted to move it into position into the space he had left – but it was too big. In order to keep it, he’d have to leave it where it was in the centre of the room.

The first problem that Nodin noticed was the complete lack of floor space. If he wanted to keep his shelves, he would have to get rid of something else. Nodin realised that the table would have to go. With tears in his eyes, Nodin moved the table down to a skip in the car park – a tangible link to his childhood scrapped harder than a Minnesotan at scrap-book camp. Although proud of his storage achievement, Nodin felt his first pang of regret as he ascended the stairs back to the bedsit.

That night, Nodin could not sleep. Despite the removal of the table, the room still felt crowded. The bed, thought Nodin. If I want to keep the unit, I’ll need to get rid of my only other piece of furniture.

The next morning, as Nodin binned the last vestige of his childhood, he felt a part of his soul atrophy. Was it worth it?

Nodin returned to the bedsit and sat on the floor staring up at the unit (he was staring – not the floor). But no – Nodin was sure that the tough choices he had made – sacrificing his family for the gift of storage – had been worth it.

Nodin collected his shelvable possessions – mainly copy books filled with his storage design plans, a pair of flip flops and a three foot shoe – and began to stack. When everything had been placed, however, he noticed something. Something dreadful. The unit didn’t work well as a shelving unit.

The books would not stand up and kept falling over. The giant shoe looked out of place. The flip flops flopped. Nodin fell to his knees.

“What have I done!” he cried. “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.” He now saw the unit with fresh eyes, the eye delivery man having just made his usual Thursday rounds. Where once he saw beauty Nodin now saw disfigurement. Where once he saw functionality he now saw flaw. And where once he saw something he loved he now saw something as unwelcome as a haemorrhoid plume lost in a blueberry factory.

A broken man, Nodin sat in his lonely, family-less room and watched the imaginary vultures of despondency circle and swoop to eat his discarded rodents of happiness.

*

For days, Nodin lay about in misery and pyjamas – his life a bad combination of ruined and over. He stared up at the monster – his only possession. It looked to out of place. It matched nothing…matched nothing thought Nodin. It matched nothing. The cogs of Nodin’s brain turned like a slow mule train on a rusty Ferris-wheel. It matched nothing he thought again. I must create something that will match it – to complete both its life and mine. I must create another unit of equal malformation. To make the world balance. A yin for its yang. A Bonnie for its Clyde. A Banana Slug for its Banana Slug.

With heavy heart and heavier lungs, Nodin returned to The Great Furniture Shop and purchased another shrewdness of shelving, caravan of cabinets and a cacophony of cupboards. Once again he began to saw and to hammer, to drag and to shape. Every nail that he drove brought him an inch further into misery. The aberrant form grew before his eyes. A stand-alone wardrobe acquired a mock Victorian travel chest and a mirrored bathroom cabinet. A Jewellery box was sewn to the wardrobe door. But it was the attempt to attach a miniature filing cabinet that proved too much for Nodin to deal with. In a fit of madness, he screamed as tears rolled down his anguished cheeks. He took a lump hammer and swung wildly – destroying what he had created. He fell to the ground – a broken man, robed in the shadow of the original monstrous unit.

*

Nodin loaded the monstrosity onto a hand cart. He turned the key in the lock of his bedsit knowing that he would never return. The cart ahead of him, he began to push it – North  – always North – back towards the shop from whence its ghastly parts had come.

After weeks of pushing, Nodin finally arrived at The Great Furniture Shop, collapsing on the footpath outside from malnutrition, from exhaustion and from gravity.

*

Wally watched through the great panoramic window as Nodin trudged onward – his greatcoat fraying, his neck scarved against the elements – handcart – now unladen – pushed ahead of him.

“What a feckin’ eejit,” thought Wally as he popped the last cold meatball into his mouth, his mind already beginning to correct the design mistakes made by Nodin …

There are a number of reasons that I like Rome. The food is simple and magnificent. The streets are a chaos of toothless old women, young men dressed as Roman Legionnaires, fat and jiggly tourists and Vespa scooters that, it seems, drive the streets by themselves. But it is the closeness of Rome’s history that I adore – a history refuses to be relegated to the past. But the last thing I expected to find when I was there was a very ancient version of the Internet …

Marie and I do not opt to stay in a hotel. Instead, we  take an apartment for a week just around the corner from the impressive Piazza Navona and a mere five minutes from the magnificent Pantheon. Bags unpacked, we decide to head out for a wander. I figure that with a name like Carabini, I should have no trouble blending in. My freckles give me away however. As does my hair that is blonding-while-you-wait. And the fact that I’m wearing shorts (something that no real Italian would ever dream of doing). And that my legs are so white the locals surely think they are minty.

Rome is a wonderfully walkable city. It does not take long, however, for the heat to begin to pose a bit of a problem for me. In Ireland, summer usually just means that the rain is slightly warmer – but here, the sun throbs like a migraine. I buy a bottle of water from a man who gesticulates wildly as I hand over the money. I initially think that I’ve done something to upset him – but it does not take me long to realise that the Italian language is, apparently, part Latin and part shadow-boxing.

The heat means that we can’t walk as fast as we normally would. Time for a little rest and a little hydration. I spy some ruins across the street – somewhere to rest. We cross over and lean our arms on the wall. This area appears to be a square with some substantial ruins in the centre – all walled off. I can see at least four ancient buildings. It looks magnificent. I inhale a deep breath through my nostrils as I contemplate it all …

“Hey – Marie,” I say, noticing a strange whiff on the air. “Do you smell piss?”

She samples the ether. “Yeah – I do, actually. I smell piss too.”

We look around to see where it is coming from.

“Seán – I think it’s cat piss.”

“Cat piss?”

“Yeah – look at the ruins – look at all the cats.”
She’s right! There appear to be hundreds of cats swarmed over the ruins – I hadn’t really noticed until now.

I consult the guidebook. “You’re not going to believe this. This place is called the Largo di Torre Argentina. It has four ancient Roman temples and is used as a cat sanctuary.”

“Well that’s … odd.”

“There are four temples. There’s the temple of Juturna – the Goddess of water springs.”
“Seems appropriate given that each cat is, essentially, a urine spring all of its own.”

There is also a temple to the Luck of the Day. It smells like cat piss. There is a temple to Lares Permarini – protector of sailors. it smells like cat piss. And, finally, there is the temple of Feronia – who, most aptly of all, is the Goddess of Wildlife, Fertility and Abundance. She’s still going strong by the looks of the hundreds of cats that have taken over this place and are trying to dissolve and destroy it with their mighty piss.

Cats, it seems, were somewhat revered, however, in ancient Rome and had free access to temples – so it is perhaps fitting that they still have this access here. As we watch, we see tourists descend into the sanctuary and walk with the cats (perhaps Rome’s version of swimming with the dolphins?).

I later learn that there are health concerns about the area and there are some in power who would remove the cats. I also learn that at this site stood the theatre of Pompey – which was one of the centres of entertainment in ancient Rome. It was, at it happens, also the place where Julius Caesar was assassinated. (the theatre ruins, it should be noted, now smell like cat piss).

And then it dawned on me … this place is a lot more significant that it had seemed at first scent. In ancient Rome, this place was the centre of political power – used, as the theatre was, as the senate building. It was a place where people came for answers – boasting no less than four temples. It was, as a theatre, the centre of entertainment. And now, it is overrun with cats. I had made a most important discovery: this place is the ancient world’s version of the Internet … and the original blueprint – power, answers, entertainment and cats – has remained unchanged for thousands of years …

Promotion interviews are never something I fully understood. It’s one thing when the employer doesn’t know the person – but when it’s an internal process where the employee has already demonstrated their capability, it starts to get a little off. Sure – you might be able to do something in practice – but can you demonstrate that you can do it in theory? It’s a process reserved usually only for criminal cases – you know – axe murders, chicken molesters, and the likes – we know you did it – but can it be proven?

It was something that I was myself faced with in the not too distant past (a promotion interview, that is …). Now, traditionally, interviews have not been my strongest suit. I’ve muddled through a few – but never really understood what they were really all about. And so, this time around, I was determined to get it right once and for all. I did my research, trawled the internet for tips and called up everyone that I know that is half way decent at them or that had actually interviewed people.

Here’s what I found on my journey.

There are, it seems, three different basic strategies that an interviewee can adopt. I’ve summed them up and given them names. Most of us start out as the ‘Elvis Impersonator’. A few of us as ‘The Pro’. But very few of us try what I like to term the ‘Tape Worm’ – which is a pity – because tape-worms are quite successful at what they do.

The Elvis Impersonator

This is used when you aren’t exactly what they are looking for – but you pretend you are anyway. Who wants to see Phil from the local butcher’s shop dressed in a jumpsuit when they really wanted Elvis Presley? The answer is not as hopeless as you might think. Elvis is dead and won’t show up to the interview. So if you look enough like him and sound enough like him, you might just get the nod. In this role, you essentially have to work the margins – you might have been a team player – but you have to talk yourself up as a team leader. You may have been a cock-up – but you have to come across as half-cocked… (Is that right? Yes – I think it’s fine …)

The Pro

A few that I spoke with came across as really professional interviewees. They were not only good at interviews – they positively looked forward to them. When I asked them for tips to those tricky interview questions – such as “Where do you see yourself in five years”, or “How do you evaluate success?”, they told me to answer with “Look – I know that you have a better question than that. Find me a real question.” I asked my brother – himself an interviewer – what he would do if he asked someone “What are your weaknesses” and they responded with “That’s not a real question – ask me something you really want to know about”? He said that he’d make note of their weakness at answering interview questions and move on.

To be the ‘Pro’ is dangerous – but if you sense that it is right, maybe it’s worth a punt.

The Tape Worm

Most people, I suspect, go for the Elvis Impersonator. But I suspect that they really should try what I’ve termed the ‘Tape Worm’. It would, I think, work particularly well for in-house promotions. What does it involve? Simple – you need to convince them that you’re already well anchored inside the organisation and are already helping to keep it lean.

What amazed me most about my journey was the anecdotes from people who had served as interviewers. In particular, the answers that they had encountered to that old standard “What are your weaknesses?” question. The answers apparently ranged from the overbearing and unbelievable “I don’t have any” to the rather questionable “I’m slow to learn things”, or the downright insane “I’m particularly bad with money”.  For those of you who face this question in the future – what you’re really being asked is to demonstrate how you overcame a particular weakness rather than expecting ten Hail Mary’s for confessing that you touch yourself inappropriately whenever you hear the Hokey Cokey. They are not interested in your personal failings. Or – to put it another way – they are absolutely interested in your personal failings. It is your job to hide them.

So – in my own interview – what direction did I chose? Was I an Elvis Impersonator? Was I a Pro? Or was I a Tape Worm? The answer is, of course, that I was something else. I was one of those animals that adapts my answer depending on the question and camouflaged myself accordingly. I am no less than the Great Potoo of the interview world.

And did it all work? Did all my research and analogizing pay off?

Yes.

It did.

This week, I thought I’d share with you three little-known bubbles in the pint that is my home city of Dublin. They are not the type of thing that you’d find on a postcard (such as an address or a stamp …) but they are places that, for me, enrich the city. Two will amuse – one in a creepy way, admittedly – and the final one will break your heart. Unless you’re a heartless jellyfish. In which case it will break your Stomach Pouch.

Stop One: Dublin Zoo

We’re all familiar with the images of pirates, clowns and monkeys that are rendered headless and displayed for children – not in a gruesome way, mind you – but in a manner that invites children to substitute their head in its place to have a photo taken and to teach them the valuable life lesson that impersonation is, somehow, a life skill so important that we introduce them to it during their formative years.

Dublin Zoo has a couple of these. There is a – literally – faceless Orang-Utan cutout that is fairly typical of your average zoo. No surprises there. It is two dimensional, cartoonish in appearance, and appears to be more of a draw than the actual Orang-Utan sitting not twenty feet from it.

The Orang-Utan is what you’d expect. What you’d not expect, however, is the faceless cut out at the penguin enclosure…

First of all, the penguin is not a simple cut out. It is a properly carved three-dimensional figure from which the face has been carved out. It therefore resembles a living penguin who has received a shotgun blast that has removed his face entirely from his skull and gives the appearance that his body is standing for a few post-blast seconds before it crumples to the ground – yet another victim of a senseless avian gangland hit.

… but it gets worse. When I bent down to get a picture from a different angle, two horrid cyborgian eyes appeared – poorly placed bolts on a nearby fence. This is the Alexander Murphy of the penguin world ….

Stop Two: The Ass Tree

A burl is a term that I’ve only recently discovered. It refers to those dreadful growths on trees that look like overswelled woody elbow skin pustules that we’ve all seen. They, apparently, the result of virus attacks on trees and can grow to enormous sizes.

Some directions: Beginning at the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park, walk out in a South-West direction – down the little slope and into the trees.

There, you will find one of Dublin’s least known – but most intriguing sights: The Ass Tree.

Some (i.e., me) say that touching it can cure a whole manner of posterior problems, including Macaque Bottom Syndrome(also known as Anus Horribilis) , Excessive Barnacles and Recto Large-o – although this last one is cured mainly because finding the Ass Tree involves walking …

Stop Three: The World’s Loneliest Zebra

Dublin has a rather wonderful Natural History museum. It is rather wonderful because it is, essentially, a museum of a museum. It not only feels like a lost piece of Victoriana – many of its exhibits date from that very time. Some of the exhibits – such as the Tasmanian Tiger – have even become extinct during the lifespan of the museum.

Sitting in the back left corner of the first floor, however, is one of the saddest things you will ever see. The museum appears to be a trophy room for a particularly overzealous safari in the 1800s. Nothing points to this zealousness more than the exhibit in this old victorian case. The animal – so old that its once black fur is beginning to fade to a browny red – is a zebra. A tiny little baby zebra. Sitting. All alone. In the corner of the display case. A full thirty feet from another case that displays what was presumably his mother.

Hope I didn’t break your heart too much with that one …

So – for those of you following the American Road Podcast …

This is a photograph of a bottle that once contained juice:

And this is a photograph of the laptop that I use to edit my podcast:

Now time for a mathematical theorem. Juice bottle + unattended laptop + 3 year old son = no more laptop.

This is a picture of a very bold boy:

And so, folks – the podcast will be on hiatus for a few weeks until we can figure this whole thing out!

Take Care!