Shite Happens!

With all the shite that’s been happening in my life as of late I’d thought I might reflect on it if only a little.

I play a Tin Whistle, Uilleann Pipes, and the Bodhran Drum: instruments used in playing Celtic Music. Studying Celtic music has revealed a few things to me through understanding the lyrics of some songs. What I noticed is that some songs are shared by all three of the British Isles or UK’s States, Ireland, Scotland, and England. What I find amusing about the difference between the three differing cultures is the attitude reflected through the different lyrics to the same song. Being Dutch I’ll site an example of a Press Gang song, which is shared by all three cultures, and that song is “The Lowlands of Holland”. In the Irish version, the male is pressed into service on a British Naval Ship to go and fight in the Wars with Holland on his wedding night. His lover pines for his return and makes an oath never to love another until his return. Then along comes her mother and says, “There are men enough in Galloway”, find another and get over it. In the Scottish version, the lover builds a ship, it is crushed in a storm with all lives lost, she builds, yet another, and it is lost at sea. A dark conclusion as all is forlorn.

What’s the lesson that I can learn from this metaphor as song. Well I think it’s a valuable one for life – damn how weighty. The lessons are simple and I think to put it this way makes it the clearest.

The Irish have always known that “Shite Happens” and then you get on with it compromising or changing to find joy or consolation.
The Scottish, bless their determined spirits, have the same spin on this “Shite Happens” but go one step further by postulating the question “Shite Happens – But why does it always happen to me?”

Please note that I respect the Scottish resolve of keep trying until you get it and I love their music - it also wouldn’t be fair to also note that the lover in the Irish song also elects to wait for her lovers return. Additionally, the lover who has been sent off to war on seeing the Dutch Coast and Countryside remarks
“Now then, Holland is a lovely land
And upon it grows fine grain
Surely 'tis a place of residence
For a soldier to remain
Where the sugar cane is plentiful
And the tea grows on the tree”
Thus reflecting a pragmatic solution to his current situation and that it would be better to stay in Holland than to fight.

What does all this mean to me then? Well I guess it comes down with what you do with the shite your served up. You could lament and eat shite sandwiches. Fight and throw a lot of Shite around or stir up some shite. Lastly, not unlike the lemons to lemonade cliché, I guess we could spread the shite and use it to fertilize and cultivate a new harvest.

Now what will I do? Stay tuned and I'll let you know.
_______________________________

In the mean time, here is a little ditty about shite.

Well, it's shite...that's right, shite!
Shite may just be the most functional
Word in the English language.

Consider:
You can get shite-faced,
Be shite out of luck,
or have shite for brains.

With a little effort,
you can get your shite together,
Find a place for your shite, Or
Be asked to shite or get off the pot.

You can smoke shite,
buy shite,
sell shite,
lose shite,
find shite,
forget shite,
and tell others to eat shite.

Some people know their shite, while
others can't tell the difference
Between Shite and Shineola.

There are lucky shites,
dumb shites,
crazy shites,
There is bull shite,
horse shite and
chicken shite.

You can throw shite,
sling shite,
catch shite,
shoot the shite,
or duck when the shite hits the fan.

You can give a shite or
serve shite on a shingle.

You can find yourself in deep shite
or be happier than a pig in shite.

Some days are colder than shite,
some days are hotter than shite,
and some days are just plain shitety.

Some music sounds like shite,
things can look like shite,
and there are times when you feel like shite.

You can have too much shite,
not enough shite,
the right shite,
the wrong shite or
a lot of weird shite.

You can carry shite,
have a mountain of shite, or find yourself up shites creek without a paddle.
Sometimes everything you touch turns to shite and other times you fall in a bucket of shite and come out smelling like a rose.

When you stop to consider all the facts,
it's the basic building block of the English language.

And remember, once you know your shite,
you don't need to know anything else!

You could pass this along, if you give a shite. Or not do so, If you don't give a shite!

Well Shite, it's time for me to go. Just wanted you to know that I do Give A Shite and hope you had a nice day, without a bunch of shite. But if you happened to catch a load of shite from some shite head........Well,

shite happens!



Gerard Pas

I learned something last night, which sort of awoke issues...

I learned something last night, which sort of awoke issues I’ve had for most of my life.
When I was a boy I was always the last person, okay sometimes second last with the big fat kid going last, to be chosen when selecting squads to play intramural or class sports in school. I always hated it because my personality was one of those “little engine that can” types and I really wanted to do well even at sports. When I got to High School the whole thing started to become totally absurd and I quickly realized that sports was not going to be a big highlight in my life in terms of team games anyway. I quickly turned my attention to reading what ever book I could lay my hands on and also like so many athletes drugs - no I’m not bitter – it’s a joke – I like Barry Bonds. As it were, I buried sports and put my head into reading Aldus Huxley for which I could excel in.

When I had children, I encouraged them to be good Spartans and participate in sports thinking something along the lines of, healthy body’s healthy minds. Both my kids played soccer with my son playing very competitive soccer traveling all over our province to play. At that time, I was encouraged to both assist and finally coach some teams because of my knowledge of the game of soccer, which my now deceased grandfather had instilled in me as a young man. I was a big soccer lover who supported only one team and that was the Dutch National Squad for World Cups – Oranje Boven. That was good because as you may know World Cup only happens every four years so I didn’t have to preoccupy myself with too much sport except for a month every four years. Then I’d get out my orange shirt and raise the Netherlands flag up the pole for the games. If Holland won, I’d be happy, if they came in second I’d be happy, if they lost I’d be disappointed but hold onto the hope that they would do better next time.

Then came a change. Before the last few years, we really wouldn’t get much soccer on television here in North America but for large tournaments like Euro or World Cups. Now suddenly because of cable/satellite I could watch almost every soccer match on all 3 of the five continents – Europe, South, and North America. English soccer being the easiest and most widely broadcast of them all. I had always loved my Dutch team and a few of the players were actually playing for English squads, my favourite being Denis Bergkamp and Marc Overmaars who were with Arsenal FC in London, UK. As a result, I started to become an Arsenal fan. Last year I got totally sucked in and what a time to be sucked in as Arsenal went on to set history by not losing a game during the season carrying the streak to this season going with 49 unbeaten matches. Wow, they won the English Premiere League Cup 2003-04. This year has been up and down but Arsenal still have a good chance of coming in second place as the lead seems to be running away with Chelsea FC.

What have I learned then? Well damn when you cathect with a sports team you live and die with that team on the field. I can’t believe the gauntlet of emotion that jocks have to go through when watching your team win or loose. As an art student the joke was always stated as follows, we’d be in the studio painting and the football team would be looking in at us as fairy artists but we’d be looking out watching men slap each other’s asses and hugging wondering whom the fairy was. So now suddenly at fifty I have become one of those guys that is glued to every Arsenal game and reading every report I can on the internet about the team even going so far as to join the membership of the club and writing the occasional article for various blogs and forums on the team.

Well last night I died a horrible death as Arsenal were schooled by Bayern Munich FC to a 3 to 1 victory. Ouch, my body actually slumped in the chair, my blood sugars were excessively high with the stress, and I was decimated. I can’t say I liked it and now I know why so many jocks are also alcoholics because damn I wanted to hit the beer bong in a big way and try to alleviate the pain. So 40 years ago I couldn’t be picked for a team and I ended up benefiting from it as it forced me to read and actually do something I’m actually good at in art. Now some 40 years later it’s come back to phuck me up. What’s with that? I mean why does it hurt so much to vicariously live out meaning based on stuffing a globe or orb into a hole or in this case the onion bag otherwise known as goal. I literally felt as though my best friends had just died. I can’t believe it has aroused such sentiment out of me a person who for most of life didn’t give a tinkers damn about sports, if I didn’t hate them because they always got money where as the arts got few in comparison. I’ll be curious to see where this takes me? What I’ll walk away with from this experience? Just now, my head feels rather large from the few pints of Boddingtons I did drink. Therefore, I’ll be sure to let you know when I do know and in the meantime, I’m off to http://www.arseblog.com to read WTF happened to my team.

One thing I’m kinda wondering about is why artists can’t have that kind of support. You know he paints he scores another masterpiece – oh well in an other world maybe.

Anyway here is a picture from the match which tells you how I felt: it is of Arsenals Coach Arsene Wenger and his assistant Pat Rice on the bench. (I borrowed the image from ArseBlog.com)



Bayern Munichen 3 - Arsenal 1

GP

Have you ever had one of those grey if not dark days?

Have you ever had one of those grey if not dark days? You know the ones were you feel that you need more than a shovel to dig yourself out of the pit your in. Well Friday last was just one of those peachy days - as this picture conveys.

After fifty years of immaculate care for my teeth the evil genie was let out of the bottle, or rather in this case the evil gene was let out of the pool and reached up and took my front two teeth. I had earlier went into my dentist, who told me that because of excessive bone loss I had to have my front teeth removed in order to save the rest. Fighting back tears, my own foolish pride and suffering from the sin of vanity I had the extractions done on Friday. Sadly, it wasn’t quite that easy as I had gone in a few weeks earlier for the same procedure, when I arrived I was told my that the partial denture which I insisted we have before the damn teeth were yanked had come back with only one tooth on it rather than the two which were to be removed. You can imagine how dark but comically funny that day was. I had insisted on the denture right away, as I didn’t want to look like a country bumpkin who had just fell of the back of a turnip truck. The thought of placing a one tooth partial into a hole for two teeth was too mind numbingly preposterous – but I have a sense of humour and this wasn’t wasted on me as painful as it was to have to wait again going through the same stress fretting the day they, my teeth, would be jerked out of my head.

All of this probably makes me sound like a preschooler because damn all I want for Christmas, Easter or any other holiday is my two front teeth back. Yes, I’m having a bridge put in once my mouth has healed from the trauma, even if my mind may never be the same.
What I learned was another lesson in understanding the “human condition” and like much of my life I’ve learned it existentially, through experience. I’m getting old and frail and all the notorious self-abuse of my youth is starting to catch up with me even if it’s as simple as loosing your front teeth. I also learned that my damn vision of myself is not unlike most but I never visualized myself looking like I do above.

Take a close look because I’m vain-glorious enough to not normally post such a flattering picture of myself. I felt it was very telling picture and I think this experience helped realize that there is only so much time for us to accomplish the things we want from our lives as it life, comes to an end. I would like to say I feel no guilt for all that I haven’t yet produced because in my minds view I’ve already produced more than many and it isn’t many who have had the success I’ve had with my work. In the end I guess the notion of where you store your treasures comes into play – do we store them on this perishable earth or somewhere that has eternal safe keeping? That said: invariably things start to decay and our bodies surge forward into deterioration. I seem to being doing just that, deteriorating right on schedule then. I’ll save the details until another time but here’s a picture which shows me under more humble circumstance and trust me when I say that I am humbled when I look.

By the way, the image I’m seated in front of is a drawing I’ve been labouring over this last little while. I will post it on my website when I’m finished it very shortly.

This is a picture of Gerard Pas, Champion Ice and Roller-Blade Skater from the Netherlands. But it's another Gerard Pas who makes the art, namely me. I just think it's cool to find other people with exactly the same name as you and when your name isn't Smith thats hard to do. Go get them Gerard may you win much silverware in your competitions as a skater. As for me I just wish I could win some silverware as in quarters and dimes as it sucks trying to live off an artists income. With my gamey left leg I make for a lousy sports figure so I guess it's back to the studio in my attempt to win something silver.

My family likes to read - this is an aspect of our library.

Rose Hips in my backyard.