If You Build It, They Will Short-Circuit.

A few people have said to me, from under makeshift shelters and large, iron shields, that they find the new blog, Coddle Pot, a little difficult to navigate.

Difficult to navigate? It's not the fucking Bermuda Triangle, people! But if the course of history has taught us nothing else, it's that change is bad, and I suppose we're right, if short-sighted, to be wary. So hold my talons hands, and I'll trot you through the whole thing. One final time. We need to accept that The Arse has been flattened ... all of us.


Coddle Pot is a group comedy blog, collective mirth, if you will. Basically it's all of the laughs with none of the back-breaking, forced consistency. The four writers involved are as differing in their comedic leanings as Batman is from Superman is from Wolverine is from The Hulk. I take the reins of a Monday, generally, with my usual splurging toss over how heavy a gram one can get for fifty quid these days and how Bertie Ahern needs defenestrating. Manuel T. Waiter serves up his coddle on a Tuesday, with those much-loved tales about the levels of utter cuntosity he gets in his workplace, looking for lobster mash and quail eggs on toast. Manuel Estimulo, everyone's favourite fascist, throws up his ... unique take on etiquette for modern living on a Wednesday. And 100% egg-free Flann dishes up on a Thursday, taking us through his celebrity lifestyle one bewildering horror at a time. Fridays is a bit of a free-for-all, but we're hoping to have something very special cooked up soon ... I'd say watch this space

Layout-wise, it's more magazine style than the puke-green linearity you've come to expect from Arse End Of Ireland; there are lots more (and complimentary) colours, for a start, and lots of lovely clickable stories gawping at you. Latest post at the top of the page, categories underneath ... nothing difficult about that! Click "Read More" to read more, that kind of thing, and comments are gently filed on each story's individual page. You don't need to log in or register, or even leave your credit card number, but thanks to everyone who did, all the same. It'sa gonna be a great Christmas thisa year! First comment or so you leave will be held for moderation, but after that, you're in the clear. Very like the Irish justice system, in fact.

We've also got a mini-site called Coddle Pot Community, which you'll see on the top bar next to our About/Contact/Links/Subscribe sections. It's in here you get our recommendations for other good blogs, music, film, and extra shite we've dirtied our online shoes in. Seeing as on the main blog we're far too focused for that kind of thing.


Yarp, that's about it! We've three months of tasty posts up for you to wallow in, and absolutely no ads for Russian brides or I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Viagra! And don't be afraid of my three co-writers. I know they're very male, and much scarier than I am, but you'll get used to them. Hmm? What's that? They're less scary? Well fuck you and the ass you sidled in on!

Lights! Camera! Lift Off! Hold on, that's not right at all.

Coddle Pot

It's where I hang out now. Yup. Departed from the Arse, headed full blast towards a nice, safe commune with like-minded demi-gods. You should pop in and all that. There's less neon green!

No comments here, so you can reach me at the ould email address or by emailing me through Coddle Pot, should you wish to partake in feedback and that kind of carry-on. Be gentle. We've still got that new commune smell - lentils, beancurd, armpits. You know what I'm talking about, County Mayo!

The new blog...

... will be announced as something raring to go and delightfully readable shortly. Honest. No, honest. Honest as David Norris' twinkly little eyes.

The new blog has a name and an address and everything. I'm just not telling you yet. Gots to Hoover the curtains and divvy up the blogroll and all that. Oh yeah, and figure out how to post.

The moral of the story is: Stay Chooned. I haven't forgotten my sworn duties to put the fragments of oddments that roll around the back of my head into eloquent text.

Help! Help! We're being repressed!

Comments wound down, kids.

Y'know, if this new venture doesn't work, I'm going to look like a right gom. Either way, keep your nose twitchin' skywards for news. And if you need to contact me in the meantime, you know the email address. If you don't know the email address, you need to look right over there -----> for it. You gom.

Winding Down, Winding Down...

... as in, I should be. Shortly. And moving! Yes, to pastures more stylish and... more crowded. Ooh!

All going well, I should be covering up this Arse very soon and taking my alarming rants to a brand new platform and a brand new web address with some brand new buds. I was going to put up a few posts this week, but I'm saving my funnies for the launch of something bigger and better. Hopefully. I mean, fingers crossed. And all that.

So yeah, I'll be closing comments and shtuff soon. Stay tuned. And if, like Twink's beauty regime, it all goes hideously wrong, I'll just slink back in and we'll pretend none of this ever happened. Right?

I'm actually quite excited. I can tell because I've got chest pains and olfactory hallucinations.

I Still See His Little Face...

Yesterday, I shut the door in a Fine Gael candidate's face.

I didn't even give him a chance to launch the good ship Bullscutter. I balked and shook my head and said, "Oh, no. Fine Gael. Don't come near me." Dear Jesus, Kerry fucking Katona could have been more eloquent. There are so many things I could have said to express my deep mistrust for Fine Gael, and to explain why there's nothing he could have told me that would win him a vote. I don't vote right wing. I don't believe Fine Gael offer anything approximating legitimate alternative for this country. I disagree with the party standpoint on a lot of issues dear to me. All of this I could have explained, but I had coffee swiftly cooling and I hate being annoyed at home after a long, hard day breaking my arse at work fending off the slavering jaws of recession and impending doom. So instead I left him gaping, and looking not a little hurt, on the doorstep.

It goes against every white-hot fleck in my ranting mouth to be rude to people. Argumentative, yes; rude, no. I really do feel bad.

Inordinately bad. Fine Gael are people too, despite what my mammy says.

No, honest, chick-lit is easy. Show me the money.

Ally has it all; the job at Grazia magazine where she writes about shoes and all that, the sexy and powerful boyfriend with blue eyes who wears suits every day, the chic apartment with underfloor heating and black granite worktops in the kitchen she's too damn slim and full of Frappucinos to use. But when stubbly artist who wears untucked t-shirts Alejandro walks into her life, she finds herself thinking that maybe her pristine existence was missing something: adventure. Within a month she's shooting heroin while discussing death and Gasper Noe movies...

Ahem.

Sally works hard at being the perfect wife and mother. Sexy advertising exec husband Adrian is still as hot as a Stanley oven for her, and she's already had him feck three adorable and high-achieving buns in... er, said oven. But with her daughter's new teacher Marco giving her ears as well as eyes, and an impending visit by the mother-in-law from hell, can Sally keep it all together in time for the Calor Gas Housewife Of The Year? Gin helps, but with Sally slowly sinking into sticking of her own piss, spread eagled on the kitchen floor while her teenage son's best mate...

Shite.

Callie, Jilly and Polly made a vow at seventeen that whoever was the most successful at thirty, according to criteria they determined while under the influence of teenage stupidity and soggy romantic ideals no one with a functioning fucking brain can stick to, would earn the incandescent jealousy of the other two, which after all is all wimmin want. Now Callie is a successful entrepreneur with the glamorous kind of anorexia, Jilly is PA to Seb Scott the edgy director, and Polly is married with kids and has run to fat and boredom. Polly is dreading the one-upmanship at their reunion holiday at Spa Chic in NYC, but sometimes, she finds, what you want is what you had all along. Incensed by her lack-of-shit-giving about their size zero frames and superstar lifestyles, Callie and Jilly create the ultimate nightmare to put Polly back in her box, the smug bitch. Poisoned, gangraped, disoriented, can Polly pull her life back together in time for her flight home...

Wow. Maybe my mam is right. There are some things I'm just not as good as Cecilia Ahern at.