The Story of the Master of Sellotape

At the moment he's unemployed. He's looking for work at offices around the country. He'll refill all empty sellotape-holder things when they're empty. When the price of sellotape fell during the recession of office goods in the '90s, the Master of Sellotape bought sellotape, a hell of a lot of sellotape and single-handedly saved several plcs on the stock exchange. Unfortunately for our hero, after all this buying up of cheap sellotape, stocks and shares he now has no money. He lives in an alleyway in Tulsa with 1,200 boxes of Sellotape (TM) and other imitation sticky-tape.

He still feels that there is a gap in the market for his service after ten years into this enterprise project. At one stage he even hired a marketeer, not realising that they're actually demons in disguise. Could you imagine a world with sellotape? If not, call the Master of Sellotape! is the slogan the prick created. The Master still had to give him $100 worth of sellotape for it. The Master is still currently living in the Tulsa area with some fat guy with a green shirt. Who'd have thought it?

But why, of all things, would a man have an obsession with sellotape and work so hard for the global markets?

Originally from Kinnegad, the Master of Sellotape had it rough growing up. The patriarchal society put pressure on the boys to be tough and dominant. Their genetic make-up would make them do this anyway but societal pressures also existed and didn't help either. Our hero was no good at sports and had a stammer. Clearly, he was going nowhere in the hierarchy of boys in Kinnegad.

Sellotape hadn't been long invented when Master of Sellotape was in fifth class. The sellotape-ball was all the rage that particular year (similar to other fads like yo-yos or pogs) and the boys would have spent their pocket-money on rolls of sellotape in the local family shop.

Sellotape-balls were highly entertaining for the hard, high-ranking boys. For the runts of the boys, they were devastating in all respects. They met barrage after barrage of sellotape-balls each morning and afternoon. They didn't hurt very much but it was a kind of social torture. In Master of Sellotape's class, only one boy got it worse than he did. This boy's name was Georgie Porgie. Nobody ever seemed to like Georgie. By most accounts, he's now in Russia campaigning relentlessly for a Russian nuclear assault against the United States of America and The Kinnegad GAA club.

For Georgie, the sellotape-ball treatment was only one of the many ways that he was shunned by the town. And then there's those other things which, for several reasons, we won't mention.

In the case of Master of Sellotape, the sellotape-ball incidents had a deep affect in his mind. He still respected the other boys for their clear hunting ability. Therefore, he placed the blame on their weapon of choice. He blamed the sellotape-ball for his misfortune in social circumstances. This may sound bizarre, but within the confines of the world of fiction, it's one-hundred percent true.

The Master of Sellotape spent his teenage years researching sellotape (know your enemy), quietly saving money from working in O'Neills public house and building up his strength and stamina on the town racetrack.

In the year of the sellotape market recession, he had enough resources to go to Wall Street. Economics classes came in handy at this point, although he couldn't really remember any particular class that he hadn't fallen asleep in within twenty minutes.

The story continued from ther euntil he hitched a ride from a trucker to Tulsa after a dard night's drinking.

So, that's the early life of the purely fictional man that they call the Master of Sellotape. Coincidentally enough a young, Irish adult has named a blog "Master of Sellotape". It's unknown if the blog is named after our hero. There's no mention of sellotape . "It's just a silly name," according to the blog. http://cheapsellotape.blogspot.com/.

Roll Call

-ÓMhaoldomhnaigh, L.
-Anseo.

So, what have you been up to these days? Loada mickey, really. I fucked up the college thing and, in general, can't do it. Well, that's if you look at one way. In a different way, you could say I have suppressed emotions until they've found other outlets, from which to pour. These outlets would involve bad concentration, low self-esteem among others. Depending on what sort of person you are and your way of viewing things, you'll follow either, not both, of the preceding explanations.

Either way, I didn't complete/do any given assignments or exams and therefore didn't do semester two of year one. I now have an extenuating circumstances form and all that. Still not out of the dark yet though.

So, apart from that, what's been going on? Not very much, I have to say. But, maybe there has and I'm just too blind or cynical to see it. We had Simone over from Tortona for just over a week. 'Twas grand time we had. Highlight of the visit: getting chips in Burdock's up opposite Christchurch, trying to get to St. Pat's Cathedral, getting lost in Dublin 8 and ending up in a pub on Patrick's street with Simone talking to the Italian barmaid. Maybe watching the snooker in the Millennium (Peacock's Steakhouse) that first Sunday he was here could be a contender too. That night we went out to Donabate was good too. I mentioned that in a previous post, I'm almost sure. So, good times had in all fairness.

Any good nights out anywhere? Few. It was Tim's birthday recently and he had a bash in Whelan's. I presumably had nothing else to do so I fecked over that far. Had few scoops as you do. Unfortunately the big-ass speakers were a little much for me. Not quite the fave thing in an establishment. Oh well, live and let live. Always someone to talk to on the Nitelink (mickey spelling, bleedin' DB). Two young ones. I mentioned to one of them that we'd seen Dr. Garret Fitzgerald on Grafton Street eating ice-cream (an amazing image!) and it turned out that her family is a big Fine Gael hub with great respect for Fitzie and all former FG Taoisigh. True story.

We were up Cock there on Saturday for a drink. Grand craic. Dropped into Lamb for a bit too. There was a group of people in the corner and a few of them were having Erdinger. So, I thought I'd try one. Something I won't be repeating. Apart from being a bit expensive, it's a bit like Carlsberg and quite fizzy. Oh well. These things must be tried once.

I was up in Eamon Doran's on Monday night. The Groove were playing (fair dues to the lads). Bit of support, you know the way. A whole €3.50 in for the night. Rip-off Ireland they say. Anyway, speaking of tasting different beers, Monday was another such night. Firstly, I had a Fosters which was okay. It was cheaper and tasted cheaper. For some reason it had the mild taste of popcorn. Next, I had a bad pint of Miller. On an earlier occasion (another previous night in Cock) I found that Miller tastes like M&Ms and whiskey. Finally, I tried a Becks. This, we agreed, tasted like Green and Blacks milk chocolate. What is it with beers tasting like chocolate?! Good times, good times.

This evening we (myself and my parents) were up in The Helix. For my Da's birthday we bought him three (hmmm, who will you bring?) tickets to Sebastian Barry's "The Pride of Parnell Street". An amazing idea for a present, tickets to a play that I was probably going to go to anyway. I've read Barry's novels "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty" (1998), "Annie Dunne" (2002) and "A Long Long Way" (2005). Haven't gone near his poetry, though. Not my sphere I think. The play was, at one stage, being staged in The Tivoli on Francis Street (the street I went down, instead of Patrick Street, which led to us getting lost that day) but I missed it that time. So, when I saw that it was going to be in a The Helix I thought nice one. Janet and Joe tell their side of their broken marriage and their own experiences in interwoven monologues that are both hilarious and heart-breaking in their simplicity and also in their complexity. Enjoyable evening of theatre, an hour and a half of unbroken Dubliners telling their story. Nice one, I will say again.

The hell-hound adventure that is the Leaving Certificate will painfully inflict itself upon sixth-year students across the Republic of Ireland (and that other weird place that does it too, wherever it is) very soon. I'll have a little memory time now. Nothing about the actual exams obviously; mainly because I can't really remember much about them. But I can remember the morning of the results. Finn, Dave and I had been drinking in Finn's house the night before which was good fun. Got home about three in the morning or something. In the morning, myself and Dave went down to the school at a ridiculous hour. We weren't first there, but we were maybe third and fourth. After receiving a handshake from the principal and a good gawk at our nice bit of paper, we headed up for Miller's of Main Street! We bought the day's papers (The Irish Times and Irish Independent) to look at all the nice statistics and all that while we had a lovely bit of breakfast in Miller's. So, that was a grand time. I didn't feel too amazing about my own results but it was grand that morning. We went back up to my house then and probably had more coffee and a chat and the like. Then of course all the bloody text messages from people started to flow... So, good luck to all you unfortunate people that have to pass temporarily though the fourth layer of hell and endure the exams. Nothing will make you feel any better about it. Unless you actually feel confident in yourself. If you are like this, you're either a complete prick or the child of the top dog in the Examinations Commission.

Now that I have time on my hands for recreational purposes, I've been reading. Wow. Sweeping statement. Over the last while I've read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and "Annie Dunne". At the moment, I'm almost finished "Falling Sideways" by Tom Holt. A bit confusing, but I suppose these comic fantasy novels are meant to be so. I bought in Hodges Figgis for €4.50 just because the blurb sounded about bonkers. It's not something that I'd usually read but there's nothing wrong with a bit of a change. I bought Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds" in Eason on O'Connell Street there two weeks ago because they had 25% off Penguin Classics. So, I might read that next. Well done to books. I also have a Patrick Kavanagh book that I may read too. If I like "Swim-Two-Birds", I'll try some more Flann O'Brien, maybe "The Third Policeman".

I had a listen to Robben Ford & the Blue Line earlier. I bought the album, "Handful Of Blues", in London a few years ago in Virgin, I think. For a while I didn't want to listen to it because I had listened to it when I was sick at one stage. So, it was connected to sickness. It's a good album though. Must put it somewhere that I'll notice it a bit more often. I've always managed to buy several CDs whenever I'm somewhere that uses the pound sterling. Most times that I've been in Northern Ireland, I've bought CDs. The same goes for being in London staying with Mary or being on holiday in Scotland. When we were in Edinburgh I bought six CDs, as far as I remember. Whatever it is about bits of paper with Lizzy on them and my desire to trade them for compact discs containing music.

"I ofen looked up at the sky an' assed meself the question - what is the moon, what is the stars?"

And with those words of wisdom I shall feck off for now. Ah, a darlin' night, a daaaarlin' night.