Ryano Stuff

I recently had occasion to shop for a light read to divert somebody who was in hospital to, let’s say, have a baby. My eye was drawn to the bright colours and cheerful aspect of UK weekly Pick Me Up, which looked suitably fluffy. I wasn’t aware, however, that the purpose of this particular journal is in fact to offer its readers a weekly glimpse into the abyss. The headlines arranged around a picture of an adorable bunny rabbit saying “Have a hoppy Easter” included the following:

My fiance dropped DEAD after seeing me RAPED

Locked up and sent to an orphanage on our dream holiday

My sister killed our mum and buried her in the woods

A happy family until my husband FORGOT our baby

In case you think I just caught it on a bad week, these are some of the headlines from the previous week’s edition (also on display):

Enjoy the weekend… You’ll be DEAD on Monday

My eyes EXPLODED while I was SHOPPING

Stabbed 80 times and dumped in a bath of bleach

Quite a pick me up.

The text of all my previous posts seems to have gone AWOL. It’s still there when I edit the post, it’s just not showing up on the site. At the moment I have no idea why this might be, nor do I have any time to try and figure it out. Normal service will be resumed at some future date.

Update: Yes, it was just an unruly plug-in. All fixed now.

The Arts Council is seeking views on the future direction of the arts in Ireland. The deadline is 8th April 2005 - Full details of the public consultation exercise here.

You will probably notice that the site has a new style, which is the default theme of the new version of Wordpress. Any comments?

The site has started to get some comment spam, so apologies if you see a lot of comments about online poker and such like. I’m hoping to put a plugin in place to filter comments based on a spammers blacklist, but please bear with us in the meantime.

Jacques Derrida died on Friday, October 8th 2004. The Guardian has a good obituary, which includes a lot of discussion of his theories and how they have been received. I’ve always found his work fascinating, but generally only when it is being explained by another writer; Derrida’s own texts I find impenetrable and rarely worth the effort involved in reading them.

In any case, in honour of the great man I am republishing below some silliness I wrote about Derrida on another web site.
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I’m messing with the stylesheet of the site at the moment, so please ignore any oddness.