With volcanic ash grounding planes across Europe and the world, we’re all in the same boat. Ha! Boat, geddit? That was the only volcano/ travel chaos joke that came to me this morning. It’s awful – so awful I’m sure I’m the 50th person to make it. But there it is. I – like everyone else -am doing my best to make light of the situation, even though I’m losing money on a flight home to Cork, where I haven’t been in about 6 months and nearly everyone I know is stuck somewhere. Or here. Rubbish.
Even more rubbish is the amount of time I’ve wasted online since this all kicked off. I’ve researched ferry prices to Cork, Wexford and Dublin, as well as ports in France and Spain. I’m practically on first name terms with the good people of the Eurostar and SNCF. I know the complete history of Eyjafluffalupagus and what its unpronounceable name means. Bear in mind: I still don’t have my passport back. This is all just “research”.
The worst part is, being online so much means I invariably drift over to Twitter or Facebook or some other site for distraction, when I should be sitting somewhere far from my computer with paper and a pen, working on my songs. So there I was, yesterday morning, distractedly checking out my website stats. I do that about once a week: it lets me know how many people visit the site, which countries they’re in and – most usefully – what’s bounced them to my page. Have they come from a link on someone else’s page? Or from Twitter? Or by Googling Tara Flynn? Those are the sort of broad, general stats it provides. It doesn’t give any indication of what kind of people are reading or searching, their lifestyles, ages, or whether or not they’re mean-spirited bastards…
…unless they key in a search like this one from just after midnight on Saturday: “Tara Flynn comedian is a c**t.” No asterisks: they’re all mine (I get quite enough nether regions action on this site relating to the other Tara Flynns to spell it out in full). Let there be no misunderstandings: the search was conducted in Dublin and specified the comedian TF (not the Spanish model or the others I’ve outlined in previous blogs). This was no hunt for the p*rn star. This was all about me.
Most interesting was that it wasn’t posted anywhere. I’ve long ago gotten used to that sort of thing being posted on forums or left on my blog: I learned many years ago not to Google my own name (except to see quite how many listings for pet holistics come up): that’s a world of “ugly“, “big nose”, “unfunny” pain. But this didn’t seem to be a proffering of the opinion, merely a holding of that opinion and a desperate search for like-minded Flynnophobes.
Not content with only finding my site by way of those keywords, my newfound hater keyed the search in again. Then it seems they mooched around for five minutes, read a blog (just the one: I am a c**t, after all) and left.
If it’s you, hello! I’m amazed you feel so strongly, but admit that I have heard that the Curry’s TV commercial I’m in is on pretty heavy rotation. Maybe you don’t like reasonably priced electrical goods? Good for you for (not) speaking up.
I don’t think I left any broken hearts in Dublin, and I know I didn’t leave any unpaid bills, so I’m not quite sure how I earned the full C-word award but – hey – we’re all entitled to our opinion. And it gave me a laugh. Thank you, c**ntface. Thank you.
April 19th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Don’t fret – the chances are that the c**t who wrote that is suffering more than you – seething jealousy is very bad for them!
April 19th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Online anonymity is such a boon for the brave new bullies and haters. I think you’re apportioning just enough importance to them, and I hope you’re not dwelling on it too much. I was cycling along, listening to the radio one evening last week when I was indiscriminately egged by some passing morons in a car. I’m thankful now that I didn’t catch the teenage idiots because I would’ve been in the Herald one way or the other. It got me thinking about emotions, about taking things personally when clearly we should not, and about what a hard bloody trick that one is to pull off. Fame and all that goes with it must be a right bloody curse.