Patrick Was Late

A couple of days ago I finally created a FaceBook page for American Hell, so if you’re on FaceBook feel free to add yourself as a fan.

UPDATE Today, August 6th 2009, there was a worldwide social media meltdown as DDoS attacks brought down and/or caused problems for Twitter, FaceBook, LiveJournal, FriendFeed. So you may be temporarily having difficulty seeing the new AmericanHell FaceBook page or getting messages that it doesn’t exist - maybe tomorrow the world will be well again.

At the time of posting there are 195 cartoons on American Hell, and dozens of them have appeared on other people’s blogs. I also continue to run a feature whereby readers can suggest names for use in a cartoon and to date have used over 150 of those suggested.

The creation of the American Hell FaceBook page is largely reflective of blogpost conversations having substantially moved from blogs to other platforms such as twitter and FaceBook (American Hell is also on Twitter). There are plans for FaceBook specific things to go on the page to accompany the actual cartoons.

And it’s relevance to Kansas City? And being Irish? Well I’m Irish, so even if I pass gas it’s an Irish wind that blows. And as for KC, well read the background and the Q & A, and you work it out.

For a more KC Irish cartoon experience you still have my Myles na gCopaleen Keats & Chapman puntastic look at Irish-American groupiedom that is The Hairdressers Guide to Information Technology

The American Hell FaceBook page is distinct from me, Eolaí on FaceBook, where I’ve been for a couple of years now.

What a great thing for an artist to be known for. Not for landscapes or portraits, nor for abstracts. But vicars and Morris Dancers. And aren’t Morris Dancers curious and surreal enough without making their situations so?

-Hey George, let’s dress in white, with knee breeches, and put colorful ribbons on our shoulders and bells on our legs and arms. We can wear wire frameworks around our waists, and decorate them to suggest horses. Oh yeah, and we can use burnt corks to blacken our faces. Then we can dance around with sticks, or swords!

And to top that all off with rhubarb? Genius.

I’m not a dessert man. Chocolate repulses me in the way that eating mud would, even mud with sugar and milk. And I’ve just spent almost a decade in a country which for some absurd reason eats desserts for breakfast. Presumably to differentiate the desserts that you eat for breakfast from the desserts that you eat for, well, dessert, sugar is added to everything that is already sweet. And to most things that aren’t.

So America didn’t convert me to desserts. For me, “Mom and Apple Pie” mostly referred to Mom buying a readymade pastry from a large supermarket chain, and filling it with apples and sugar. And cake was never just cake. It was cake with extra sugar, so that you’re eating raw sugar with a cake-like texture. But it needs to look pretty so a fluorescent extra-sweetened gick is pasted on top. And it’s all served with dollops of cream. Cream with sugar added.

But this is the end of March. It is the time for rhubarb to appear:

No, not Roobarb - rhubarb.

This is mine. It was given to me by my parents several decades ago. All I had to do then to look after it was, well, nothing. Our rhubarb is indestructable you see. Back then my parents had 7 rhubarb clumps. I would pick whatever stalks were ready each week, keep whatever the family needed, and sell the rest to the local supermarket which in truth wasn’t very super.

108 stalks was the most I sold in a single go. In the supermarket they would sell out in minutes, because you couldn’t get better rhubarb. The stuff that they ordinarily sold was skinny limp things more deserving of the word flog than stalk.

As you can see from the picture it won’t be long now and I’ll be getting to eat some rhubarb again. For dessert that is, not breakfast. I’m looking forward to rhubarb pie right now.

And who doesn’t like rhubarb and custard?

(When Roobarb Didn’t See The Sun Come)

Called “Uncle Sam’s Lodging House” the cartoon dates from 1882 and shows the Irish guest “kicking up a row” while other guests such as the Englishman, German, Spaniard, Negro and Russian are all “quiet and peaceable”.

You can see where Tony sourced the cartoon from the Michigan State University Museum, where explanatory notes tell us that the accompanying editorial in Puck had a strong anti-Irish sentiment.

Tony’s post draws parallels with much of the language we hear today about Latinos. I’ve always felt it’s an obvious parallel, and one that gets concenviently ignored by many, especially the Irish.

See Related:
   • Illegal Irish Immigrants Worth More than Illegal Mexicans
   • The San Patricios: The Irish Soldiers of Mexico
   • Green, White and Red Apples
   • Irish Flags in US Political Demonstrations
   • Sharpie Time For Irish Flags

It was exactly a year ago today that I launched my cartoon site, American Hell. If you ignore the background that is.

You know the day I do too much talking here on Irish KC? Well, I do very little over on American Hell, yet probably manage to say a lot more with it.

Despite the dent in production that the upheaval of moving back to Ireland has caused, the readership continues to grow, and the site continues to pick up compliments. I am still outrageously proud that American Hell was a finalist in Arts & Culture category of the 2008 Irish Blog Awards.

Thanks a metric ton to all those who read AH, especially the small band of commenters.

I mean my other baby

Probably because I met people. And when you meet 2-dimensional people it’s easy to do cartoons of them. None of that fancy 3D rendering software needed.

But I just don’t have the energy to post them. I am lacking in umph. It is umph that is needed to get cartoons out of my head.

What a pity it’s my head that’s full of cartoons and not my arse.

Look! They Have Irish Names:
    • When Bridgette Read Vladimir’s MySpace
    • He Knew Niamh Was Upset With Him
    • When Róisín Convinced David
    • Nuala Never Earned The Reputation Of A Slut

Although it took a much bigger impact than Irish KC with the re-location back to Ireland, its traffic has in fact increased during that disruption. So if I feel the need to further increase traffic I’ll stop posting again.

Today though was a landmark over there as I posted #100.

Here’s some earlier numbers from me:

    #16 He Was On Auto-Pilot Brushing His Teeth

    #37 Thomas Really Wanted To Know

    #64 Lance Loved Olive So Much

    #80 When Bridgette Read Vladimir’s MySpace

Bibi has news for TT:

See More Because You Know You Liked It:
   • uachtar reoite : ice cream
   • oileán : island
   • turas : trip
   • Seymour Ignored Her

A lot of people don’t like the name - because it’s a negative American name that is written by an Irishman. Em, as I explain in the Q&A there, it’s just a name.

The content on the site however has become quite popular quite quickly.

And speaking of names, it takes suggestions for names to appear in cartoons, be they yours or people you love/hate.

• History & Background
• Questions & Answers

There are similar planned pages for Irish KC specifically, as companion pieces to the already existing About The Author page.

Bibi and TT, the American girls with a taste for things Irish, are trying out the Irish-style of compliments.

See More Because You Can’t Help Yourself:
   • ag gol : crying
   • She Waited An Eternity
   • ealaín : art
   • madra : dog
   • We’d Still Be Married

The girls are back!

Bibi (on the left) is talking with TT (on the right) about Irish Jewelry.

See Other Cartoons And The Like:
   • Guns and Americans
   • uachtar reoite : ice cream
   • He Was On Auto-Pilot Brushing His Teeth
   • Conversation in a Dublin Pub: Rommel
   • oileán : island
   • You Could Drive A Bus

See what I did there?

It has nothing to do with Irish KC beyond being created by myself, so as such there is nothing deliberately Irish about it, but coming from the same mind - which happens to be Irish and living in Kansas City - it will probably overlap a token amount.

Love, technology, animals, consumer relations, or stuff I don’t know how to describe, will form the focus of each daily post.

Not too much of the chirpy happy positive spin that you get over-indulged with here on Irish KC, American Hell will embrace a cynicism, failure, and absence, where possible in a mean-spirited manner.

If only to help launch it, it wouldn’t hurt if you added it to your blogroll and/or feeds. At least for now; you can take it off later when you realize it’s rubbish.

Based on drawings and words I’ve been collecting for over twenty-five years, since I first started blogging seven years ago I’ve been planning on using this medium for it - though you wouldn’t know that from looking at it, and I still need to tweak a couple of things.

I don’t imagine I’ll have much need to mention it too often on Irish KC again.

Oh, and that reminds me, I have a new cartoon myself to launch, called “Pigeons on a Wall” but let me bounce a couple of presentation ideas off the dog first.

Related Posts:
   • bád : boat
   • cairde : friends
   • áisiúil : convenient
   • cosúil : similar
   • uachtar reoite : ice cream