I got published in the Sunday Times!!

Talk about a hack job on editing though – they put in just two or three lines! I’m trying to load it on but the page is pretty large :(  But still…

Colin 1 Brenda 0

x

My letter to Brenda Power …

If you haven’t read her delightful columns in the last two weeks’ Sunday Times then google her… here’s the letter I wrote her….

Dear Brenda
 
I’ve read both your articles regarding gay rights both last week and this week. I’m not going to get into all the name-calling and vitriolic comments that I know you have experienced since they were published, as I don’t think that would achieve much. I would however, as a proud gay man, like to raise two points with you.
 
I had a conversation with a woman (my ex-boss actually) just after she had gotten married last year. I had known her for three years and we were and still are very close. I asked her why she had gotten married. She told me she had done so because she deeply loved the man she had been with for the last 5 years and wanted to stand up in front of her family and friends and make a commitment to him. So I asked her if she felt in any way different after getting married – did it really change their relationship. “Not really”, she said. “But I wake up every morning since and I feel, just more secure I guess. Safe. It’s a wonderful feeling, and a lovely way to live life”.
 
For the life of me, I cannot understand why you would want to deny that to anyone simply because they naturally love someone of their own sex.
 
Secondly on the adoption issue, there is no gay couple in Ireland looking for the “right to adopt”. We are looking for the right to be considered for adoption. The only people who can make a decision on the best interests of a child who has been put up for adoption are trained professionals who assess each potential adoptive parent thoroughly, and make informed decisions based on years of training and experience. With respect, you are neither qualified nor competent enough to make these decisions. Let our applications go in with everyone else, and let the people who we already trust to make the decision on what is best for a child make their judgement. There is no need for you to be worried that we might make good (or even great) parents.
 
On that point, I think I would be a great parent. I have my faults but deep down I honestly believe that I’m a genuinely good and decent person, despite what the Catholic Church or the Iona Institute thinks of me. I believe that I could provide a child with a very healthy upbringing. I was brought up by two fantastic parents who did an excellent job rearing my sister and I. Neither of us wanted for love one day of our lives. Not even that day when we were cleaning up after Sunday dinner a week before I turned twenty-one, and I finally told them what I’d felt forced to hide from them for the previous ten or so years. They, I believe, have shown me exactly what qualities were really most important to a child’s upbringing – it didn’t have anything to do with what sex they were. I’ve learned from the best Brenda.
 
This is why I took offence to your suggestion that women in Ireland would be more likely to have an abortion than dare ‘run the risk’ of their child potentially falling into my care. I hope you can now understand this.
 
Yours Sincerely

Colin Keenan.

The good ol’ Irish Embassy

Last week I sent off my passport application with everything in it to the Irish Embassy in Canberra. Decided to give them a call a couple of days later to make sure they had received the long-form birth cert that needed to be faxed over from Ireland also…
 
I was told yes the passport application was received and the birth cert was correctly faxed as required. Just one little thing, my current temporary passport wasn’t in the envelope with everything else, and would I mind sending it in. I told her it DEFINITELY was in with everything else, I was sitting at my desk when I did everything and remember clearly putting it in the envelope. She said no, she’d just opened it “not ten minutes beforehand” and it definitely wasn’t there, she’d opened it herself and hadn’t moved from where she was and that it wasn’t there.
 
She advised me that if I couldn’t find it (which I couldn’t) that I’d have to report it lost to the police. To make things even more cheery, two lost/stolen passports in a row and you’re put on restricted passports!

I was in a right flap; went back to the past office to make sure I hadn’t left it there while posting, sent an email to all 80 staff in the company here advising them to please look out for it around the company, and got the building security to start pulling security tapes in the hope something may show up (there’s no camera on my desk but late entries into the office might be suspicious/noticed etc??)
 
Rang her back later and told her I just didn’t know what to say, the last place I remembered having it was in my hand putting it in the envelope and clearly I was going mad. She sympathised, especially with the Buenos Aires plight, but to the Dept of Foreign Affairs a lost/stolen passport is just that, no matter what the circumstances. So she said she would pop the form back to me in the post to get signed off by police.
 
5 hours later an email comes from “Sally” at the Embassy:
 
Hi Colin,
Just to let you know, your passport turned up. We found it in the accounts department – sorry for any inconvenience this probably caused.
Sally
 
You couldn’t make it up…morons.

Happy birthday!!!!

Miss ya x

(…but don’t miss the scary bird behind us!! What the?!)

What on EARTH is going on?!!!

I wouldn’t normally be one to blow my own trumpet *cough cough* but I seem to have carved out somewhat of a niche on the web in the last few days!!! My visitor numbers have gone through the ROOF!!!!

OK so on an ‘average’ day or whatever, I got anything from 3 or 4 hits (when I had landed in Melbourne and wasn’t posting) up to 60 or 70 (back when I was in South America and popping out the stories of muggings, sunburn and mingin’ food). I thought that was pretty respectable for a muppet from south Dublin anyway!! Then during the week there was this thread on a Dublin boards website called QueerID about blogs and I popped my one on it. That got 75 hits or something and then like 40 the next day. But it wasn’t that!!!

That was earlier in the week…then the visitor counter starting going up into the hundreds…like 300 on Thursday, 600 on Friday, 1200 last Saturday!!!! Then 1700+ on Sunday!!!!!! I didn’t know what was going on. Maybe I’d become famous overnight? But nope. Turns out it was all down to my Mum!

Back a few weeks ago I posted a ‘funny’ Happy Mother’s Day card on the blog that I stole from Google. It was Mothers Day in the States this weekend, and turns out if you type in “funny mothers day” to Google Images my site comes up in the top few results. Thanks Mum!

So it’s not just cos’ I’m popular…

V Festival

We did V Festival a few weeks back. Great craic. Saw The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Snow Patrol, Duffy (whose shit hot by the way!). Kaiser Chiefs were my favourite – fantastic…

BUT!!! There was one act on a small stage that we hadn’t even heard was playing til we got there. 90’s LEDGE Vanilla Ice!! I have never known hysteria like it, it was borderline Beatles-mania. Seriously. He was playing in this little ’shed’ of a place at the back of the grounds and there was a giant crush to get on! The security line was breached and everything, girls were crying, lads were shouting. We managed to squeeze in when the security line broke so got a good view. He only played for 15 minutes (of which about 13 minutes was ‘Ice Ice Baby’) but it was savage!! Worth the price of the ticket alone!!!!

Deffo one of the moments i’ll look back on in years to come

I live within 5 minutes of ALL of these…

Memories…

and this…

and, yes, this is an actual shop…

I love office jobs!

It’s been 6 months since I’ve been in a office job and I’d forgotten little perks of them. Free tea and coffee and snacks, free internet, unlimited stationery, and the very Australian tradition of free beers every Friday afternoon in the break room!

And random emails!!! Got this from one of my “Dear Friends” in Africa who wants to make me a millionaire…

My Dear,

I am Dr.George Konan in Ivory Coast.I need your

honest assistance to transfer Usd$17.7 Million Dollars from here.Please

reply with your direct phone number and full name if interested.I await your

quick reply.

- Dr.George Konan

And this, entitled “pictures that make you go WTF?!” I think it makes them funnier when you’re laughing at them in your suit at work, but come on, look at these gems!

Fat drag queen with Oompa Loompas and distressed rabbits…

this is just weird…

and my fave!!!

Two swine flu cases confirmed in Australia

But don’t worry, i’m being careful. (More careful than this kid anyway.)

Col x

New job…

Bye bye crazy Lebanese!! Chucked in the cafe job and am now working as a dogsbody in a finance place in Melbourne. It was great working in the cafe, stress free plus I “achieved” one big thing – I can make excellent coffee now. Here’s one I made earlier..

But I was broke!!! If your gonna work any job, and get up in the morning for it, ya might as well make some cash for it. Yeah, I know, I’m a capitalist whore. (Sorry Will!!!) So I’ve 6 months in this job which will hopefully soften the blow and enable me to go to the ton of concerts that I wanna go to in the next few months…Lily Allen, Beyonce, Sneaky Sound System…loads..

Started last week and at the moment haven’t got the faintest idea what the hell i’m doing, so at the mo i’m doin’ my best to look busy and feigning concentration as best I can…

So far so good!