It’s all happening at the zoo. . .

Over at the new gaf, I’m talking about ridiculously disgusting vertiginous heels, cataloguing my daily duds, wishing for knee-high socks and beautiful knitwear, astounded by the Topshop Unique show for London Fashion Week and waxing lyrical about copyright law. Phew! Long may this flurry of posting continue. . .

What’s new, pussycat?

Well, over at my new site I’m waxing lyrical about Twitter, Mark Fast, beautiful photographies and Jimmy Choo for H&M – and it’s only day one. Check it out!

Pause for thought. . .

Having made the decision to streamline my life (beginning with a serious clear-out of things via eBay – more details soon), this is the last post I’ll make on this site, as I make the move over to the new and improved rosemarymaccabe.com. The new site will be a more professional take on personal, and will combine personal musings, fashion, narcissism, music and journalism. Bated breath, I’m sure. See you there. . .

A bloody enterprise

I’ve always had a penchant for vampires on the television. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, beginning with the movie, graduating to the TV series (all seven series of it, some purchased – in a vastly erroneous decision – on VHS); Anne Rice’s vampire series; then Twilight, the movie, the books, the movie; Bram Stoker’s Dracula; and, most recently, determinedly, obsessively, True Blood.

As Ciara said today, HBO truly does make the best TV. Imagine living in the US, she mused, with a vast array of HBO options facing your Sunday evenings. Instead, we get Big Brother (but, to be fair, that’s not confined to Sundays), Fair City, Entourage (which I’ve heard is good, to be fair, and is also a HBO series), The Simpsons and House (also good, and a US series, although the credits here go to Fox).

I can’t decide what True Blood is, though. It’s a TV series, sure, and it features vampires – a variety of them, in fact. It’s set in a world in which vampires are accepted in society; they have rights, they have responsibilities; they can hold jobs. They can’t eat humans (unless the humans ask to be bitten, in which case they are referred to, poetically, as “fang-bangers”), they buy blood in the grocery store. The brand? True Blood, obviously. It’s “metallic”, I hear, and best served warm, although a poor substitute for the real thing.

Anna Paquin is undoubtedly the stand-out star of the show. She plays the leading lady – the girl all the boys love to love, the friendly, small-town barmaid who gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. Oh, and she’s telepathic. Ryan Kwanten, of Home and Away fame, plays Paquin’s yokel (for want of a better word) brother. Oh, and he’s a nymphomaniac. Then there’s the sassy black friend (and everyone should have one), the caring boss, the brooding vampire. There’s the serial killer, the voodoo witch, the alcoholic mother, the caring and level-headed grandmother.

It’s unlike anything else (see the opening credits, above). The accents are a little grating, at times; Paquin’s wholesome too-good-to-be-true persona is initially difficult to relate to, the vampire is no Robert Pattinson. But it’s entirely, addictively, compelling. One series in two days? Tick. Next series started? Tick tick. And I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next.

I’ll be talking about it here in about a week; but for now, pick it up and check it out. Because it’s worth it.

Bono for president?

Oh, say it ain’t so. Via Maman Poulet, Paddy Power has the list of odds for the next Irish president. Bertie at 2/1 is both surprising and unsurprising; rumours of his candidacy have been swirling for a while, and now that Cowen’s got the mantle in the Dáil, Bertie has to do something with his time. What is surprising is that he is at 2/1; is it insulting that Paddy Power has the collective Irish IQ pitched slightly below Jordan’s, or is it just fact? Would the Irish public really vote Bertie back into “power”, however nominal, despite all of his dastardly deeds?

Bono is at 40/1 which is ridiculous – the fact that a man with a four-letter nickname is anywhere near that list is laughable. Sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did run. If he did, though, I would imagine he may very well win, and it would be interesting to see how his sunglasse-d face would influence the voting habits of the young and apathetic.

This may seem like complete sucking up (full disclosure: I work in The Irish Times, on a freelance basis, in production) but I think Geraldine Kennedy would be a great candidate. My second vote would go to David Norris, I think he’s about as modern as an Irish politician can get while still having any sway (and no, that’s not because he’s openly homosexual, Mother).

See the full list here and decide who you’d put your money on.

Yo’ comments are whack

And as an addendum, might I suggest paying attention, those of you who think one sentence is a paragraph. You know who you are and, frankly, it hurts my eyes.

This is how I felt last Wednesday night in Crawdaddy

Sui-te dreams are made of these. . .

I signed up to mails from The Outnet when it first arrived on the scene and – apart from a few hairy moments with a very impractical pair of Louboutins – I’ve never been tempted by its wares. Until yesterday, that is, when I got an e-mail with a beautiful consignment of Anna Sui items. Behold the joys:

Lyrical loveliness. . .

Via Lenny, I’ve rediscovered my love of The Postal Service. Behold:

Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls

It seemed only appropriate to use a Blur track, given their stomping performance – Damon Albarn’s drug use aside (tut tut) – at this weekend’s Oxegen festival.

Today I emerged from my cardboard box of work and sleep to listen to some Today FM for a while; Ray Darcy was discussing, simultaneously (and rather confusingly, I thought) the story about the Swedish parents who have opted to bring their child up asexually and the results of the first phase of the Growing Up in Ireland study.

(As an aside and, on the top of the Swedish couple and their child, whom the media has nicknamed Pop, what an interesting experiment. I’ve often wondered how cultural norms and values influence children – but I suspect there is a very valid reason, oh, something to do with ethics perhaps and the fate of the poor child, that this has never been attempted by scientists.)