Irish bathrooms are a trap

I'm going to say this right from the start. You should really flush all expectations you have for this post straight down the toilet.

This toilet.

Finally-at long last- the bathroom post.

I know you have a lot of intelligent questions about Ireland, like what's the culture like and stuff, but secretly there is only one thing anyone wants to know: if I go to the bathroom in a different country, what will it be like? Well the wait is over. Kate is here to give you the low down on the loo.

Irish toilets are terrifying.
First off, there is no guarantee you will ever get out. I can't tell you how many toilets I've been in where I had to contort myself into an origami paper dragon just to reach soap and then blast myself out the door with an industrial strength hand drier. Honestly, the exits here are designed for teeny people. Just one more thing the leprechauns have ruined.

Do you see this s#*%? I am completely f@&%ing stuck.
And no, I'm not that fat yet.

Not only do these bathrooms make you feel fat, they also make you feel like a child. Because all over town you'll find detailed instructions on how to wash your hands. Multi step directions, posted in big block letters, just in case you lost your train of thought in the middle and had no idea how to proceed from there. Walking into an Irish bathroom makes you feel like an obese infant. No link here. Just imagine it.

Next, I will the answer to the great mystery of the blue bathrooms, because you come here for learning. Flatmate Ciaragh has informed me that the blue lights are not, in fact, full body scanners, but a preventative measure to ensure that you cannot find your veins and shoot up heroin in the immigration office bathroom. Which makes little sense to me, because Irish people don't do drugs in the bathroom. They do them in plain sight in the middle of the pub.





This is Matt and Janetta. They would wish you a happy stay in Ireland, if they ever got out of this bathroom.







What Irish bathrooms lack in drugs, they make up for in something far more heinous: chewable toothbrushes. I wish I had a picture for you of what my face looked like while I was eating it. A chewable toothbrush is a a one Euro tissue which you get out of a bathroom dispenser and shove in your mouth. It only takes about thirty seconds of chewing to for the user to notice the the taste of injustice at having been robbed.

In the same vein, Irish bathroom establishments will take all of your money and none of your s#*%. Entrance fee is 25 cents to comb your hair, twenty bucks to take a dump.

To be fair, Ireland isn't the only country with messed up toilet law. I must make a correction to my earlier statement: European toilets are terrifying.

In Normandy, my friends tried to lock me in a robot bathroom.This is an automated cylinder bathroom which will automatically airlock after every use to santize the entire bathroom. This highly advanced crapping device does not, however, know how to detect humans, so if you find yourself too slow to get out, you may very well drown in your own piss.

This is Aidan, embracing the sweet, sweet light of day after a close encounter with a French toilet

Even Paris had creepy bathrooms. Friend Janetta went to avail herself of the facilities in a bar in the Latin quarter, only to retun to say there was no girls' bathroom. Wrong. Unisex is just the classy way of saying pit latrine. But hey! It's culture! You're not allowed to judge.

The next time you venture into a toilet, take a look around for these things: multiple security checkpoints, an attendant who locks you in McDonalds, a stuffed Indian tiger, or life size pictures of women checking out your goods. Watch out- you just might be in Ireland.

Note: If you made it to the end of this blog post without clicking on one article link, congratulations. You are so smart you get a nerdswirly in the back of a high school lavoratory.

I disapprove of most Irish animals

Shout out to my girl Lindsey “Wave of Mutilation” Arturo, who said the first thing she’d ask me when I returned from Ireland is what small creatures I discovered. This one’s for you.

Ireland has some animals. Not too many, but a few, and so far they’ve all made me feel uncomfortable. For your zoological education, I offer a brief guide to the wildlife of Ireland.

Squirrels here have no game whatsoever. If you think a single red squirrel sighting can get me excited, you obviously don’t know about Gus. Meet Gus.

This is Gus. He is a fatass squirrel who lives on my deck eating whatever s%@# he can get his paws on.

In Murica we have real squirrels who do it right, stuffing their faces full of garbage and waddling around in near patriotic fashion. Playas like Gus don’t waste their time jumping tree to tree like some dandy fox imposter with too much ear hair. They just wait for the humans to come to them, flash ‘em a chubby smile and nom till they explode. Keep doing your thing, squirrels. I respect you.

Pigeons have a serious attitude problem. They do not pose for pictures, they do not do anything funny, and they always get in my way. One time in Cork I saw a sweet alcove in the side of a church, and what do you think I found there? Three pigeons s&*##ing on the face of the Virgin Mary. Nice, pigeons. Real nice.

Pigeons committing sacrilege.

Seagulls are just poser pigeons. Not much to say about seagulls, except that they are ravenous scavengers and act more pretentious than a frat boy at a football game.

See this seagull? He thinks he’s the captain of the ship. What a tool.

Crows make me think I’m gonna die. For weeks I’d been hearing the noise of creatures plotting under my window eaves, so a few days ago when they woke me up at a stupidly early hour I decided to catch them in the act. I ripped open my curtains to find a demon crow staring me straight in the eyeball, causing me to loose a particularly sharp Bieber scream into the apartment quad. Thanks to these crows, I have a constant reminder of my impending mortality and a link to my boy Edgar Allen Poe.

No picture for this one. If you take a picture of a crow, it eats your soul.

Seals, unlike most birds, would actually make my crew.

This is a Grey Seal. We understand each other.

The Grey Seals of Howth Harbor spend most of their time cruising around the marina, tempting people to throw them fish. I liked watching them sneeze and chow down on harbor weed. One seal and I had a moment when I stared deep into its massive cow eyes and contemplated how much cooler it was than a sea cow. Like me, Grey Seals get by with their laziness and procrastination by being really, really ridiculously good looking.

And of course, there are sheep.

Fools thought the sheep jokes were over. Too bad you didn’t know the #1 rule about sheep jokes: they are NEVER over. I have made so many sheep jokes this trip that if I tell one more, one of my friends may literally throw a sheep at me. As in they will walk to the nearest patch of grass, pick up a sheep, and concuss it against at my head.

So you don’t have to listen to me talk about sheep, I’ve created a brief montage about them. Watch it.

Ya. Ireland has some goats too.

Music credit to Waylander and e-water.net

Foreigners make ridiculous faces

It's about time I introduced you to the gang. This manky bunch of foreign people make me happy.

This is Janetta. Janetta hails from Canada and spends most of her time running into things. The rest of the time she spends contemplating ways I might end her in her sleep. Janetta has a great affection for meat, touques and making everyone breakfast.

This is Claire. Claire has an infuriating habit of not taking bad photos, so hopefully you find her American smile creepy.Claire enjoys learning Irish and getting into arguments with storekeepers about how to make pies.

This is Ryan. I already told you about Ryan, so instead of a story about his crazed dismantling of bunk beds at 3 in the morning, you get a Ryanquote and a nickname:

"I just stepped in sewage"- Stabby.

This is Joanna. Joanna has the highest Vitamin C count of anyone I know, and cannot say the word bag. She is also Canadian and has single-pantedly polished most of the Wiklow mountain range with her bum.

This is Marine. She sings S Club 7 constantly and enjoys pretending to be a bear. By the end of the semester, this Frenchwoman will have either killed or adopted a sheep.

This is Aidan. She comes from Canada and has a highly disturbing obsession with pandas. Aidan, like most Canadian children, was brainwashed from infancy into believing a hippo lived in her closet.

This is Matt. Matt is often mistaken for a homeless person for eating things like cans of beans and packages of ham ravenously on the street. Matt aspires to be McDonalds' first Kiwi spokesmodel.

This is Sego. She likes to dance and feast on radishes, not necessarily in the order. Sego once sang me a French lullaby about chocolate on a mountain top.

This is Cam. Cam prefers to avoid roads and directions and instead trespass private property whenever possible. He also wins the award for most Smeagol-like behavior in a castle dungeon.

This is Lise. Lise has a habit of performing suggestive French hip gyrations on street corners at 7:30 in the morning. We also suspect she may actually murder someone during a game of Go Fish.

This is Edwin. We seldom see Edwin (Photo credit to Joanna Ebejer) because he is involved in an intense love affair with BlackRock. Edwin comes from Hong Kong, drinks banana milk, and thinks my name is Katy Perry.

To be fair, I will include a photo of myself, courtesy of Janetta McKenzie, in which I look fat, drunk and stupid all at once. Thank you Janetta. Additionally, to even the score, I will reveal that during the process of writing this post I spilled orange juice down my bra.

Note: There are many wonderful people who are not pictured in this highly complimentary post. If you are one of these, do not despair. Given time, photos and the appropriate number of embarrassing stories, you too may appear in The Black Pool.

Irish folk know their fresh beats

Party people,

DJ KCo here to drop the world on your auditory orifices. Think Ireland is Riverdance and Titanic soundtrack? Think again, sucka. Hot off the Irish club scene, here the sickest Irish floorjams of 2011.

The RubberBandits, taking Ireland by storm with their class and sensibility.

Step 1: Select your poison track
Step 2: Inject it into party playlist
Step 3: Pump up the volume
Step 4: Crump it out. All of it. Crump all of it.
This not yo gramma's tea party. This s%$# is real.

Droppin.
1. Barbara Streisand- Duck Sauce. Official theme song of Irish posse. Pay attention.
2. Who's That Chick- Rihanna & David Guetta. Fly plus fly equals superfly. Watch yourself.
3. Horse Outside- Rubberbandits. Irish true and UCD approved. School up.
4. The Dog Days are Over- Florence and the Machine. Get past the Glee. Go crazy.
5. Kickstarts- Example. Lesson learned. Rinse and repeat.

Topping up with the next level of clubbery. Stay tuned.
Word out.