andcurve.weblog - The weblog of Kevin Teljeur. Somewhere within all the noise, there is a note you need to hear.

I have bigger, more important things to post about than this, but… It is funny and seems to have amused a few people so far. Particularly girls! It’s the kind of thing which demonstrates the cultural divide between the skirted boob-carriers and the trousered cock-wielders; interestingly, and largely by pure co-incidence, I got pulled (or forced my way, it’s a moot point at any rate) into a conversation in Kilkenny on Saturday night, at a party, we were all slightly drunk, I’m setting the scene here, bear with me, about gender being a cultural construct. This interesting topic came up because Lise (it’s short for Elisabeth, very important to know that)Lise (who is called Elisabeth in real life; it’s a cultural thing) and Mark (who calls me Chris for some reason) in the cab. Madness ensued shortly afterwards. Click image to view larger version is doing a thesis on this area and had some opinions on the subject to share with group. As usual, so did I, and got stuck in with some opinions of my own, and I’ve actually been thinking about it since. I’ve formed some forceful and no doubt controversial ideas which I’ll happily throw the way of anyone who’ll care to listen, and they’ll get me beaten too. About time, some will say.This single heated conversation had an interesting effect on me in that since then I’ve been thinking more clearly, articulating myself much better and generally been using my mind a bit more. I had, I think, been getting a little complacent. Aren’t young people fantastic?
Props to Lise! I’ll sum up my view as this; I have a cock. It is not the biggest cock there is, it isn’t always the most reliable of cocks, and certainly not the most beautiful, but it is and always has been there, and I’ve always known what it is there for. Now, I’ll admit that use of it wasn’t something that came naturally to me, but that’s just some technical stuff. I’ve always known what I’ve wanted to do with it, and with girls. I wasn’t taught that. I wasn’t taught to have a cock, and cute pair of nuts to go with it. This is because I am male, and it’s part of the package; I know some males realise early on that the skirted boob-carriers are not for them, but that’s not a cultural thing either, they just know from day one that they are benders and that’s the way it is (I’m not a bender, by the way, in case that wasn’t clear. But each to their own. I’m sure Brokeback Mountain is a great movie.). And the same goes for girls who don’t like the the trousered cock-wielders. Mind you, many a time you can’t blame them really. But being facetious and deliberately offensive aside, my point is that these are not learned things. I am what I am, you are what you are, and these things are decided in a large part by your genes.This whole area of discussion is not unrelated to the very politically incorrect and sensitive discussion about race; suffice to say, some human population groups are genetically predisposed to be better at certain things (by and large) than others. These ‘things’ can be a little nebulous, but sport is a good example of what I’m talking about here, and I won’t go into it any further because it’s a tricky one which I can’t tackle lightly without a little research.

So, all that said, there are certain things which while in theory they are cultural issues, I think that evolution and the biology of gender means that there are things which women can’t understand. At all. If you went back in time (or to New Zealand) and explained the offside rule to Maximus Decimus Meridias then I think you’ll find that he would find the time (in between defeating the Germanic hordes) to say “Ah yes, of course, that’s entirely reasonable. Good idea, too!” and he’d be right. It’s a man thing. Girls… Well, you know, the offside rule. That’s the way it is.

This came up when having to explain ‘cock-blocking’ to a finite but seemingly endless number of Romanian women after some of the frenzied commenting on my previous post regarding my going to teach Engleza in Romania, where I had to use the term (in jest, of course) about the women who teach in… It’s a long story. Read the post and the comments to see what I mean. Anyway, here’s my explanation, if you don’t like the semi-official version.

If a guy has an interest in a girl and is trying to chat her up then the cock-block is an attempt to foil the chat up, usually by a friend of the girl (male or female). Sometimes it’s a friend of the guy, who himself has an interest in the girl, or is just very socially inept. If the guy doing the cock-blocking is a friend of the girl, then he is probably cock-blocking in order to keep the girl to himself. On the other hand, if it’s a girl, then she is misguidedly trying to protect her friend from having a good time (or she wants the guy to herself).

Now, entirely hypothetically, let’s say I express an interest in Angela, who is a friend of my friend Jen. However, Jen isn’t happy about this, because she doesn’t want me to get lucky with Angela (perhaps, because it would be awkward, especially if I was only interested in Angela for casual sex), so Jen has to do something to prevent me from getting Angela’s attention. For example, she might loudly ask me in front of Angela if my syphillis has cleared up yet, or if my wife is coming over to join us. Of course, there is the bungled cock-block, whereby for example, Jen may try to block me by saying to Angela “Dude! He’s so not clever, he just lost €9,000 in a stupid investment in some company!”. But Angela might think that there must be more where that came from and be encouraged rather than discouraged… Thus a bungled cock-block. Dude! This would make it very hard for me to ‘get lucky’ with Angela, hence the term ‘cock-block’, because my cock has almost literally been blocked.

Well, I thought I should share these thoughts with group. I’ve been beavering away on posts to finish the Vienna trip write-up (with some truly scandalous and epic stuff in there), the Devon trip write-up (complete with pillow-heads) and Kenny’s birthday. And now also the epic Kilkenny trip, as well as a million other things I’ve seen, done and farted in the general direction of over the last few weeks. I have to finish Keith’s site too, for then I will have a third site out there which I’ve built on top of Wordpress, the same fantastic free software which makes this site possible…

(edited on 19th April 2006 to add the bungled scenario. Pretty important possibility, I believe.)

Me, all fuzzy and wearing The Hat, which makes me irresistable to all women. Even hairy ones. Click image to view larger version

Guinness is great; you drink it, and then all too late you realise what it’s doing to you, but it feels so damn good, you just can’t fight it… The downside is that I haven’t had a day without alchohol since last Thursday, which is a lot less good.

Today was interesting, to say the least. I had to write off a ridiculous amount of money (if you crashed your car you would lose this kind of money), but I got a job offer from Romania! Just one line on Messenger really could have some very far-reaching effects on my life over the coming year, and hopefully be a very positive development. So shouts out to Oana, Moni and all their crew in Timisoara!

What a day though. I’ll finish the posts on my recent travels over the weekend, and put those photos up too. Unmissable stuff, I can tell you now!

(Edited on 12.04.06 to add the image)

Here it is. My first ‘Kev is off somewhere, I suppose you could even call it travelling’ post, all the way from sunny Vienna (or Wien, as the locals call it). I’m enjoying it. The weather is good, the locals are… Well, they’re Austrian, so I don’t know how I should quantify that. Arnold Schwartzenegger is Austrian, I was here before and had some decidedly mixed feelings about Vienna (beautiful architecture and a clear sense of history, set against what can only be described as generous helpings of arrogance.)´and of course there is Mozart. So far the weather has been great, Alex (who I am visiting here, she used to live in Graz but has since moved here to get a job, and hopefully I will catch up with Filip too, of whom more later)
Alex. She is dressed like this in case the agents come after her and she is not able to escape the Matrix in time. Click image to view larger version has managed to buy carpets and whatnot for her apartment, and we have seen all manner of stuff about town.

A typical street in Vienna. A lot more messy than you might expect. Click image to view larger versionReally fantastically huge and old building in Vienna, protected by marble beast women. Really. Click image to view larger versionAt the Styrian Fair, promoting all things Styrian and rustic, by making fantastic amounts of noise. You can see how this leads to other things. Click image to view larger versionThe Styrian fair with the Town Hall as a back-drop. Quite impressive, I have to say. Click image to view larger versionI think this is the parliament building, where those efficient Austrians get on with decision making. Where’s Haider? Click image to view larger version
I was quite taken by the statues here. They are impressive, imposing, well hewn from the primordial rock and also show that somewhere around five hundred years ago there was some sculpturally gifted guy who was determined to provide the world with the largest collection possible of winged, heavily-beweaponed, two-metres-and-then-some-tall beast-women, all crafted from the finest marble and stone. Really. I could have some very lurid sexual fantasies as a result of all this – although I have sworn off such things for lent – because some of them are in very provocative situations. Others just look like men, which is in it’s own way a lot more disturbing, because I very much doubt that attractive women are a recent development in Austria.
I wasn’t joking. Huge marble beast-women. Almost sexy, if you’re into that sort of thing. Which I’m not. Ever. Click image to view larger versionSee the pattern already? Huge, armed, dangerous and imposing stone chicks, ready for battle. Everywhere. Click image to view larger version
Tonight will see a night on the town which should be interesting, given my previous experiences in Austria, and perhaps more phone-terrorism from Tee, who made a drunken attempt to call me last night which unfortunately I missed but it was appreciated all the same. More drunken calls please, everybody! Apart from Ciaran, who has comfortably filled his quota for the concievable future.

More huge old buildings in Vienna. Very imposing. Click image to view larger versionAnd more old stuff in Vienna! Click image to view larger versionThe most amazingly old and dirty church ever. They are cleaning it, however, the second time in 4,000 years. Very intricate and beautiful. Click image to view larger versionOutside the incredibly big and old church, with all sorts of antics from street performers and other stuff. Click image to view larger version

I booked this flight a couple of months ago after Alex asked me when was I next coming over, and I realised I hadn’t been abroad in a while other than to England for some brief but all too tortuous business trips which of course don’t count as holiday, even for masochists, which I would like to think I’m not. Often. In the same fell swoop I also booked a trip to Devon (via Bristol) which was last weekend
Jane Cole, former runway model and Miss Devon Hotpot 2005. Also, a fantastic host and amazing person. Click image to view larger version and that kind of book-ended a series of entertaining adventures over several weeks which have gone a long way to explaining the lack of posts on this site. Believe me when I say I have plenty of new material to write about but too little time; it’s all very exciting, ranging from getting locked into the toilet to blasts from the past and beyond!

I was really feeling down on Thursday, having thought far too much about some serious issues relating to the direction my life’s been going in, work, stuff like that (money, in a nutshell – effectively, I’m on the same money I was on five and half years ago, which is no joke. Time to change that!) and I wasn’t happy about it, but I had a good stern talking to from Annette after she caught me being a bit miserable in the house and I felt a lot more positive after that.
The Maddy and the Annette being positive, just after they took me on a birthday lunch in Castleknock, which was very nice of them and a lot of fun. Click image to view larger version She really knows how to instill positive energy in people, I should suggest to her to do this for a living. Maybe she could set up a centre somewhere with positivity pods where miserable people like me could go to cop the fuck on to themselves while wired to PostivePods™. By the time I went to bed I was feeling ready to tackle the world again, though the tackling has been delayed until Tuesday what with me mucking about in Vienna for the weekend. You read it here first! Unless you’re Annette, in which case you heard it first over the course of a life-draining hour on Thursday night and are still wondering how you managed to escape… Just kidding! On the down side, I was about to write a fantastic and very dark post about it all, very good stuff and my first stab at structured writing, which would have entertained everyone a lot but of course I got a good talking-to from Annette and decided that this business of introspective self-absorbtion wasn’t going to do me any favours, and canned it. Bad Annette! But also Good Annette and shouts out to her for showing me the light!

Life’s too short, and we need to make the most of our time here, even if we make some mistakes as we go. After all, we make them to learn from them.

(Edited on 12.04.06 to add gazillions of images.)

Today was my first day back at work in 2006, and I proudly joined the aggressive cunts going to work. In fact, I was one of them, cursing the slowness and inefficiency of the fools in front of me. Had one of them keeled over, dead from exhaustion, I would have gladly stepped over his or her cooling corpse in order to get ahead in the crowd, and get to the office that precious 3 minutes earlier.

Yeah, that’s my New Year’s sermon. It’s all about the benjamins, and fucking over some bastard that gets in my way as I climb to the top. I’m putting together my 2006 Plan, and I don’t look forward to the part where I have to think ahead to the next 5 years too, because that’s something I’ll have to do in the next month or two. I’m not getting any younger, and I need to start thinking about what’s next. You can tell I’ve been talking to thirty-something year-old women, can’t you? But it’s true, I have to. I have to think hard about my work situation, and where that’s going, and also about what I’m going to go and do later in the year. Japan and Romania both beckon this year, I’m going to have paid off all my debts quite shortly and be that rare thing in Ireland today, a thirty-something male with no debts (well, none to the bank; I’m sure I owe something to someone.) and in a number of ways free to do whatever the fuck I want.

On the bright side, I went for a run in the morning. I can start my 2006 plan by cutting a few inches off my tubby waistline. And pricing some language learning stuff for Japanese, Czech and Romanian.

More on all of this later, I have to tie up some loose ends, get some shit done and then I can do my 2005 round-up and my 2006 plan. And my thoughts on the first of the political parties here to try banking on xenophobia to win the next election. The Labour party as Brown Shirts? Oh no! There is much to be done and so little time…

La Multi Ani!

Happy New Year! Best wishes for 2006 to all my readers and everyone else generally, I hope you achieve your desires for the year and that you have good health and happiness. That title is ‘Happy New Year’ (or something equivalent) in Romanian. Yes, last year’s phrase was in Czech and this year’s is Romanian, so who knows what next year’s will be. That is one thing I’ve already decided this year, which is that next year I’ll celebrate New Year’s in a country I haven’t been to yet. You heard it here first (unless I drunkenly blurted it out to you last night).

I spent New Year’s with Vlad and Diana and several of their friends (Aude, Bonsa and Alina, with our genial, camper-than-Liberace host ‘Cusin’ and his housemate), and it was a good night. Certainly a change from last year’s well intended but ultimately traumatic snot-fest in the darkest reaches of the Czech Republic, in a willage somewhere with Pavel, Tanya and some friends of Pavel’s. I had a bad cold which was just that night reaching a crescendo of personal humiliation, but luckily it didn’t set a trend for the year. Actually, I tell a lie because a few weeks later I got a moderately serious infection, which convinced me of the security of fulltime employment.

I stayed in Vlad and Diana’s place, which was very entertaining the day after.

I promised a round-up of 2005, a set of photos and I also want to use this blog to do my annual ‘mission statement‘ (sort of a collection of life-improvement resolutions, which I usually package with some sort of catchy and dynamic-sounding phrase. It’s personal marketing.), but it can wait a day I suspect. It’s nothing urgent.