banshees and brighton and R bloody KELLY

so there's this old irish folk tale of the banshee - not a specific story (as far as i'm aware) but the general myth told to children and men in pubs - if you hear the banshee screaming your name, soon you will die. something made me think about this in a new light today - banshees are always women. you know, those things with tits and hair and difficult personalties. anyway, all myths have a basis in fact, don't they? so how could we interpret this as an exclusively irish phenomenon? well, i have a theory. it doesn't make it uniquely irish as far as i know, but think about this; a woman screaming your name means you will soon die. lets think about the common folk in the middle ages. i don't think that's a superstition. when do women scream people's names? not very often actually. one everyday, bandied-about, as yet-untested theory is during sex (jess nicols did actually say my name once or twice during intimate play, which may or may not have been deliberate). so what happens if mrs. o'connor screams 'ooh, paddy murphy!' during sex with her husband? it means mr. o'connor will soon be knocking at mr. murphy's door, and he'll probably want to at least kill paddy. so there we have it.

wikipedia has a slightly better article on banshees. it puts me right on a few inconsistancies for sure, but if i recognised that i'd have to delete what i've just spent a whole grandaddy album writing.

incidentally, did anyone notice a recursive cliche in that piece? it is the commonly held presupposition of 'no smoke without fire'. it backs itself up. everything recieved must have some truth to it, because otherwise it wouldn't be bandied about. but why is that last sentance itself true? well, y'know, no smoke without fire. and so the cycle continues.


what made me think of people shouting the wrong name during sex? r kelly. the man is a genius. you need to go to his website. do you see (and hear) the mp3 player at the bottom right of the site? you need to scroll that to track 15, and listen to part one of his urbane infidelity saga, 'trapped in the closet'. alledgedly, videos exist for all five parts so far, but i've not been able to be bothered to find them all (yet). this is actually the very funniest thing i've seen since ray cooney died.
after you have listened to the first five parts of that (i.e. all that's there), check out kelly performing part 6 live on the mtv awards (mov) and look at his face. and his arms. 'live' is an exaggeration; he is miming, but at least he's appearing live, and he sure is 'lively' so i guess that counts. i was laughing like a child at this, on my knees in front of the computer (my back's hurting today).


what's wrong with brighton? i'll tell you what's wrong with bloody brighton. you go into 'suga qube' bar (which doesn't sell any kind of bitter). you need the loo, so you go in. it's tiny. they've put a mirror above the sink , surrounded by dressing room style light bulbs. opposite this is another, full length mirror. this area has a kind of crazy twist in the ceiling, it comes in slanted in every axis towards the sink. i go to the crapper. there is another mirror in there. there's also another sink. coloured lights. i unload. there's no toilet paper. what's more, there's not even any soap at that sink, now that i have to thouroughly clean my left hand. that's whats wrong with brighton. all fur coat and no knickers (as my mum used to say).

edit: while investigating the banshee's fairy roots, i came across this folk metal group, tuatha de danann. flutes, guitars, the odd retro lead synth. they sing in english and have titles like 'dance of the little ones' and 'brazuzan - taller than a hill' they're like the irish sepultura.
which is ironic, because they're also brazilian.