April 2013
1 post
The Misery of Celebrity Crushes.
While I was moving apartment my boyfriend found a small framed picture of another man.
I had forgotten I still had it.
It was part of a teenage crush, which I’d no idea how to act upon.
The man was from a TV show, the picture was from a magazine.
It was Noah Wyle.
My boyfriend burst out laughing.
Celebrity crushes aren’t easy. I had never been one for typical heart throbs....
March 2013
2 posts
Emmaisms
Emma calls those ‘shake and bake’ pancakes, Wankakes. Brilliants.
Emma: ‘Your passport looks like it once got wet?’ Me: ‘Yea, it fell into a body of water’ ‘It fell into the toilet didn’t it?’ ‘Yup!’
Emma commenting on my cleavage laden top ‘What’s this? Bring your boobs to work Wednesday?’
Went into a...
The Logic of the 3 bears.
As Colm and I are walking, I frequently tell him about things that have been playing on my mind. Today it was this.
‘In Goldilocks and the three bears, Daddy bear’s porridge is too hot, Mummy’s is too cold and Baby bear’s is just right.
Based on bowl sizes and cooling times, that would mean that Mummy bear had less food than baby bear.’
Colm replied ‘Maybe...
January 2013
8 posts
Birth control
As soon as I sit down my mother asks what’s wrong. I have purposefully worn an expression warranting such a question. My explanation is a tearful blurb about feeling hurt and anxious, my low self esteem rubbed against a ghost from my past and emotions welled.
Using hand motions she talks about shovelling things into the compost to let them decay out of sight, then to use them for something good...
When Tempest Toss'd, Embrace Chaos.: No, No more. →
cripesonfriday:
Tonight, on the Late Late Show, the last guest was Fiona Doyle, whose name has become well known in Ireland, and worldwide, this week after her father was granted, then denied, bail after being convicted of the serial rape of his daughter over a ten year period. I watched the interview on +1, as…
Forever21 put my art on a shirt without my... →
moosekleenex:
1 tag
December 2012
7 posts
Christmas is over.
The static dies on a Christmas jumper. Thrown into a wardrobe, it will sink to the bottom over the bottom.
Where it drowns, unironed, in forgotten festive irony.
A Christmas cracker joke, discarded. The closest it will come to laughter being the arch cackling of seagulls at the dump.
They love bad jokes but they cannot read.
Custard, uneaten, thickens its skin for its inevitable trip into...
2 tags
Christmas Adventures [part two]
I was buying a candle to put on the table during dinner, it’s a tradition.
Shop assistant: ‘That’s a nice candle.’
Me: ‘I find a candle really adds mood to family arguments over Christmas dinner. You can really see the rage in someone’s eyes.’
*Laughing, she moves to wrap it in bubble wrap .*
Me: ‘Don’t bother, it’s only going to end up smashed against the wall.
Though the bubble wrap might...
Christmas Adventures [part one]
Dad: ‘Did you go to the pharmacy and buy that thing?’
Mum: ‘No, I forgot, I didn’t even think about it.’
Dad gives a frustrated sigh.
Mum: ‘I can put olive oil inside it!’
Dad: [to me] ‘My ear is giving me awful trouble.
Me: ‘Oh thank God! I thought you guys were talking about something else!’
Dad: ‘What?’
Mum: ‘She thought we meant lube.’
The awkward self esteem post.
I am 31 years old, I survived cancer as a teenager, I went on to get a science degree, then a PhD, have written a number of scientific publications, have appeared on stage as a stand up comedian and have a following as both on Twitter and as a cartoonist.
I am listing out these achievements not out of pride but to illustrate that despite how many things I seem to have going for me I have...
3 tags
November 2012
4 posts
Phone calls.
The sun shone into the hallway through our open front door, it was early May.
I was seven years old.
My mother had just finished doing all the ironing for once, when the phone rang. She answered and my uncle told her that her mother had died from a massive heart attack. She was 59.
This was the first time I’d seen my mother cry, sobbing, sitting on the chair in the kitchen, beside piles...
Wasps
One of the guys in work has never been stung by a wasp.
I was stung by a wasp when I was 2, I was in a pushchair and eating jelly tots. It may be my earliest memory.
When I was 7 I was stung by a wasp after it went into one of my wellies, I was on the toilet at the time and had at that stage developed an incredibly unhealthy phobia of wasps.
Hilarity ensued.
I’ve been stung by the...
1 tag
Time and soup weights for no man.
She’s talking, I’m not really listening. She’s saying something about how things are different now and hands me a book.
I’m not really listening, I’m standing on a scales. It’s hard to listen when I’m standing on a scales.
‘This is your BMI’
I stare at the number, the BMI is meaningless I say while searing it into my brain.
‘This is...
October 2012
1 post
Nick Ciarelli: Petting Zoo For Sad Animals →
nickciarelli:
You took the kids to the petting zoo for sad animals. Not thinking twice about it.
“Why is it called the petting zoo for sad animals?” your daughter asks.
“Because the animals here are very sad,” you tell her.
“But why?”
“Because they are sad.”
“But why?” You don’t feel like explaining it to…
September 2012
2 posts
You were talking in your sleep again....
Twitter loves TV shows and talks about it a lot.
I thought that if you remove the hashtags from these tweets, they just look like the crazy shit that people shout in in their sleep.
Here are some examples from people I follow on Twitter.
I just removed the Hashtags.
“I wish I was Lady Mary. Through the wall Matthew. Through. The. Wall.”
‘Go fuck yourself! ..will be...
1 tag
August 2012
4 posts
Between two worlds.
When I learned languages in school part of that involved talking about our family.
The translation of these words
‘I have one brother and one sister’.
Then their ages. The information placed me as the youngest. That my brother James is two years older than me and my sister Denise two years older again.
Of the languages I learned to speak snatches of, German, French, Irish and Spanish.
I never...
July 2012
5 posts
Ignite Dublin Talk.
So, I work as a scientist and was delighted to do an Ignite talk.
Ignite is, 5 minutes on a subject where the slides change every 15 seconds.
Mine was on ‘What does kills all known germs actually mean?’
I drew the slides so they’re like the doodles.
The video is here!
An hour in the day.
For me, therapy can be described as
‘An hour where I can cry in front of someone and they’re not allowed to feel awkward about it.’
And that’s how I describe it.
And afterwards I go into the bathroom and I try to make my face look like I haven’t been crying for the past hour.
That my make up isn’t streaked or strained under emotion and that everything is...
Adventures in Cat Ownership.
One of the reasons we moved was to get a cat. Not primarily though, primarily it was for space. Our one bedroom apartment was accumulating items in my need to fill every available surface and to have a wardrobe which doors could only dream of being able to close.
Eventually my boyfriend and I moved into a house, two bedrooms, one of which now contains only my clothing and a wardrobe door which...
June 2012
5 posts
Hey! Fever?
A summer’s evening, my world rotates, spins, over and over, my vision blurs then I stop, it keeps moving, grass blades swirling inches from my face. Our dog Tiny is grabbing my laces and pulling.
At the time I’d think that she was just trying be annoying but later I would realise that I was wrong. We were children, children she carried about, rolling down a grassy hill at speed,...
Phone calls with my Mum.
Phone conversation I just had with my mother Mum: ‘Any other news?’ Me: ‘Not really.’ Mum: ‘Here talk to Dad, he’s getting ready to go for a swim at the beach….he’s taking off his socks. Here, talk to him now’ *muffled exchange between my parents* Mum: ‘Well, you can’t talk to him now… He’s naked. [To Dad] Jimmy,...
Meaty congratulations card. →
May 2012
4 posts
A poem for Jenny
Anna said she wanted a poem for her friend Jenny who is having her hen weekend.
I asked her for information.
She told me:
Jenny is marrying James who is a plumber,
She’s training to be a nurse,
She broke a lamp on Anna’s hen weekend,
Her and Anna once had a drunken band where Jenny played bongos and Anna
played a biscuit tin.
So I wrote this poem.
A poem for Jenny
This is a...
A conversation.
Taking off my coat, my headphones, she watches me and after I sit down she says.
‘Well, how are you?’
I tell her that I’m stressed about printing the cards, that I worry they won’t make any profit that way. That it feels like a lot of effort for little pay off. I tell her about work. About a party I went to. I tell her that I think my self confidence is getting better....
Twisted Lil Doodles: Card sale or such. →
twistedlildoodles:
Reduced the price on all the Cards!. For a limited time. Also Redbubble will give you a 20% discount if you order 8. http://www.redbubble.com/people/twisteddoodles Is it hard to make money selling cards?
Yes, yes it is. Redbubble let you set your own profit line so I’ve put it at 20% and 30%….
An open letter to the No. 11 bus in Dublin.
Dear No. 11 Bus,
What the hell happened today? What was that? The sign said you were due for ages and then you never showed. I’m waiting there IN. THE. RAIN. for you. And you’re telling me
‘Almost there… almost there’.
And then you know what, you never arrived and it no longer said you were coming.
And the sign says ‘Hey, the 16 will be here in quarter of...
April 2012
4 posts
Twisted Lil Doodles: Hello! →
twistedlildoodles:
My name is Maria.
I am also @Twistedlilkitty on Twitter.
I am 30, I live in Ireland, I work as a scientist, I do stand up comedy and I draw.
I’ve drawn for nearly all of my life and only recently did I take it up again and these doodles are the result of that. I realised that I spent a lot…
March 2012
13 posts
