1) Clad in black, austere, severe, surrounded by cats. Here is the Old Maid archetype. The terrifying spectre of moth-balled, odd-ball female singledom that haunts the dreams of women everywhere (or so patriarchal bastard card-mongers would have you believe). She stares vacantly into space. Impossibly empty space. Joyless and despair-filled space. Silent space punctuated only by the dull "plop" of cat shit hitting the floor.

2) Chirpy, unreasonably optimistic, and demented gargoyle. Tragically out of step with contemporary fads and fashions. Caked in cheap make-up in a late and desperate bid to hook a man. A pantomime dame, a drag queen, a disaster. A lesson to ladies everywhere. Dear God, don't leave it too late.

3) Clad in the mode of a terrifying maiden aunt, her meanings seem, at first glance, easy to unpick and unpack. But there's that roguish smile. And there's that…um…circus. Is she proud of that "Admit One" ticket she so brazenly displays? Is this an "Old Maid" content with her singular lot? Can society cope with such a creature?

4) Rich. Eccentric. Crazy cat lady. Rattling tipsily around a decaying mansion. Simple.

5) Mary Poppins with an inhuman taste for man-flesh. Crazed rictus grin revealing teeth sharpened into vampiric points. Not just sexually and socially dead, but undead. Yet still somehow predatorial. Flee, menfolk. Flee! She wants to chomp yer balls clean off.

6) Young girl thinks – "Whatever happens in my life, I must not become her".

7) Parrot shrieking the name of a lost love (drowned at sea). Animal menagerie stinking up the house with the odour of faecal matter and social maladjustment. Heart arrowed not by Cupid but by his malevolent bastard cousin. A motif that recurs in our next offering…

…which has the added non-bonus of spectacles (Ugh! Intellectual!), a bedraggled and suicidal feline, and knitting – the non-sexiest thing one can do with one's hands. You can't knit passion. You can't knit a child!

9) A greater sin than unwanted, unwonted and grossly inappropriate sexual aggression is…ice-cold, buttoned-down, purse-lipped frigidity. Who does she think she is?

10) Witch and her familiar. Drinker of infant blood. Pure evil.

Part of the University of Limerick's "National Self Portrait Collection of Ireland", it was plonked (with little ceremony and less regard to the aesthetics of display) in a corridor and on an austere, breeze-blocked wall. In as much as you're ever aware of (or engaged with) the imagery you whizz by daily – my initial impressions were simply of a 70s, airbrushed thing. A crass and kitsch thing. A piece of "bad art".

But then, gradually and inexorably, it began quietly convincing me of its charms. No longer just gaudy crap, it became a lovably comic (and cosmic) piece of visual, Sci-Fi mysticism. One that appeared to cheerily disregard conventional notions of "good" and "bad". A piece of "nerd art"…or "B-Art" perhaps. Peter Bowles in a lost novelisation of Sapphire & Steele? The fact that it had been "dumped" in a corridor – a liminal space; between nowhere and somewhere else; neither here nor there (nor one thing or another) – seemed entirely fitting.

The enigmatic creator of this in-betweeny realm turned out to be a Michael Ashur. I wondered had he tired of this prismatic, spectral, Prog-Art approach. Was he still living amongst us or had he – like an airbrushed and ionised proton – been long since sucked into a mortal coil, through a wormhole, and out into the astral arms of the Godhead (or Galactus)?

Well according to his website, he's still inhabiting the same quotidian, meat-and-two-veg space as the rest of us. Still producing work that contemplates the "synchronicity between human and cosmic time"…

…and pieces that invite the viewer to "journey beyond the painterly surface in search of the universal…the infinite". Pieces like "Galactic Probe" (bestest name in the universe ever for an Irish artwork).

Cynics may bleat, "Aren't these all just Yes album sleeves?". Well…yes, kinda. But they transport me away. Away from breeze-blocked walls and damp and negative equity. Into a great beyond…with cool strobing light effects, and monoliths on the moon, and a giant foetus sucking its thumb at the outer edge of forever.

Actually, there was one other source. Ladybird. That iconic publisher of pocket-ish-sized storehouses of knowledge. Series 737 was a personal favourite of mine when I was a lad. Devoted Ladybird site "The Wee Web" explains its thrill-stuffed appeal:

Lots of interesting subjects were tackled in this series – the history of Bread and how it was made through the ages…

Cor! Tell me more!

But seriously, if it hadn't been for Great Artists (Books 1-3) I'd have mortifyingly flunked Leaving Cert Art History.

Not only were they about "great art" (i.e. the art of old dead white guys), they contained great art. Like this lurid action shot of a mental Van Gogh stalking Paul Gauguin with a cut-throat razor.

Chuckle! What a character.

I refer of course to the classic 70s/80s version. The version I collected as a kid. Back when everything was 100% objectively better in every conceivable way than things are now. The contemporary versions – like the diabolic abomination that is/was reimagined roller-bladin' Pepsi Max Action Man – are utterly soulless affairs. Dreamed up by besuited corporate dullards. Crap and cynical tie-ins for crap and cynical "franchises".

Though the slick and lifeless images are bad enough – smothered, as they are, in a processed CGI-cling-film sheen – it's the arbitrary and WTF-like nature of the individual category scores that most offend my nerd-child sensibilities. As a young fella I genuinely believed that Waddington's employed teams of cool and dispassionate boffins (boffins swayed by neither whim nor fleeting fancy) to assign a particular card its values. They were, basically, androids – who'd crunch all available data before deciding that Fu Manchu warranted a "Fear Factor" rating of 74. No less. No more.

Today's Trumps (with their chimps and typewriters approach) either reveal this belief to be the product of wide-eyed boyhood naivety, or else the makers (as I suspect) just give much less of a shit now. Sure the kids will lap up any old crap as long as Harry-fucking-Potter-cock is on the box.

Anyway, that lengthy old-mannish rant is but an excuse to showcase some of the crude beauties of yore. All of these were once in my possession. Now gone. All utterly gone forever. *sob*

The Fiend. Not (by any means) the most formidable card in the Horror pack (or packs, there were two) but a clean decapitation with a single swipe? Kudos. No skimping on the gore either. Yay!

Venus? Goddess of love and beauty. Venusians? Unfeeling hackers-off of prisoners' heads.

Yes, Death was actually a playable card. Death! And he looked weird. And he kicked ass (check out those stats). Have to question a "Killing Power" of (a mere) 95 out of 100 though, for a character who, y'know, is death itself.

The "Spacecraft" set was another favourite. One offering delightful (and incongruous) mash-ups that gleefully erased boring old divisions between science fact and science fiction. Ever wanted to know who'd win in a "fight" between the Viking 1 Mars Lander…

…and an "Imperial Space Cruiser" (a.k.a Imperial Star Destroyer)?

Top Trumps once had the answers. To this, and all other questions.

This is why ad agencies should be paying me the big massive bucks. But they're afraid. Too afraid…

The damn spineless & hidebound fools!

No more gif(t)s for you tomorrow. You've had enough.

Final gif(t) tomorrow.

Or so August Storck KG, makers of Werther's Original(s), would have us believe. Their sweets are the sugary glue that bind the myriad fabrics of reality together. They existed before the big bang. Before God (who based his whole shtick on the company's trademark chuckly and benign Grandfather).

They incongruously (and thrillingly) combine raw elemental power, with saccharine tweeness. They are steadfast. Changeless. Ageless. Beloved by viewers of Countdown. Yet eternal. Universal. Stare at a Werther's Original under an electron microscope and what do you see? Millions of smaller Werther's Originals. Each one of which contains a trillion even more tiny Wether's Originals. And so on and on and on forever. And ever. And ever.

What follows is a humble (Flipnote) attempt to capture this omnipresent and cosmically head-fucking essence.

More tomorrow.

Clouds are nasty and evil. See here:

More tomorrow.

Formative experience recollection time.

It's a summer evening in, oh, 1979 (or thenabouts), and I'm standing – gob-smacked and wonder-filled – in the lobby of the (no-longer-existent) prom-side cinema in Lahinch, Co. Clare. I've just seen Disney's Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs for the first time, and its 83 minutes of Technicolor gorgeousness have rocked my little world.

I'm not the only one thus affected. A (presumably awed & dazed) teenage boy emerges from the theatre, ambles across the lobby, and walks up to, into, and straight through the cinema's floor-to-ceiling glass window/door. Miraculously he is (in my memory at least) unhurt. Such is the power of animation. It not only fires and fuels your imagination – it throws a protective aura of invincibility around you as well.

For the majority of the rest of my childhood all I wanted to be was a "cartoonist" (the proper term, I assumed, for someone who produces animated cartoons). I sketched. I doodled (a lot). I drew cariacatures of teachers on classmates' copy-books. I was utterly dedicated to my craft.

Then – as happens with about 99.99999% of humankind – I hit my teens, thought "Ah, fuck it", and went off drinking cider and listening to The Doors. Such (as the platitudinous fella no doubt says) is life.

Skip forward 30 years and I'm buying a Nintendo DSi for my birthday. Skip forward another day or two and I'm downloading Flipnote Studio. Skip forward ten minutes more and I'm giving life to crude stick figures. Here's an early effort – combining the simple joys of (falling flat on one's arse) slapstick with the grim tragedy of (Sisyphean) eternal recurrence.

Bwaa ha ha! Look at him fall! Right in the hole. Over and Over! There he goes again. And again! Ah ha ha ha! The poor doomed bastard…*sniff*

More tomorrow.

Take Jan Provoost's Christian Allegory (1510-15) for instance. Brimming with the thrown-together, jumble-of-images, pseudo-meaningful charm of a C-grade Leaving Cert "imaginative composition".

All the usual suspects are present and correct. Lamb & dove: Super-cute! Mighty sword of righteousness: Awesome! Giant fuzz-encrusted all-seeing eye: Spooky! Weird sleepy-looking monocular ovoid cheese thing (with a pair of jutting hands): Fuck!

Oh, and giant bowling ball? Confusing!

But advertising – that great omnipresent, satanic force – hardly helps. It knows we're down. It counts on and thrives on it. While we lie groaning in the gutter trying (desperately) to have a peak at distant stars, advertising's gaping, squatting, spangled arse obscures our vision.

It obscures it with images of shiny demigods, aglow with their own self-love. Livin' & lovin' life in sun-drenched IKEA apartments. Always up to kooky antics. Roller-blading indoors! Bouncing impishly on their beds! Pillow fights! DJs in the corner!! They're making the most of now. 24/7.

While the below couple are not quite as achingly hip, they're certainly no less odious (or shiny).

She? Default, middle-of-the-road dazzler. He? Wearing the open-necked blue shirt uniform of (conservative) youthful-ish affluence. Slacks and deck shoes unseen but implied.

A hard copy of the image was "liberated" (by me) from a coffee shop in the University of Limerick. Every table had (and continues to have) one – staring the assembled punters in the face and helpfully decoding the true meaning of the coffee-drinking experience for them. It's about friends,,,and life…and love…and coffee…or something.

Yet, on the face of it, nothing concrete or specific is being advertised here. It's not pushing a particular brand. It's not promoting a particular restaurant. It's selling some sort of abstract aspirational dream. A vision of a world chock full of smug, self-satisfied, "successful" cunts.

Has the global financial apocalypse softened their coughs or dampened their self-regard? Not a bit of it. They've simply popped on pairs of wellies, started growing their own organic veg, and lent their shiny faces to ads (disingenuously) pushing nouveau-frugal consumerism. If anything, they're more in love with themselves than before. And now they've seized the moral high ground, we – who sit scratching out holes, scarfing down Taytos, and wanking furiously in a bid to temporarily escape the dull awfulness of life – are made to feel shitter than ever.

An example? The head-scratching, terminally confused, clipart stickman. You know him. That perma-bewildered stick-personification of contemporary unsureness. That shit millenarian version of Munch's Scream whose angst sprung not from agonising (deeply human) existential dilemmas, but, rather, from an inability to figure out how the photocopier worked.

His natural homes were crap self-help/educational websites, crap fliers advertising crap managerial workshops, crap posters promoting crap religious get-togethers etc, etc. Wherever there was doubt and uncertainty, there he'd be – like a bewildered & silhouetted Fido Dido – promising the solutions to your confusions.

And now? Try Googling him. He's hard to find…possibly due to being laughed off the net, in the kind of hipster ridicule pogrom that put paid to Comic Sans. Or perhaps he lives on, hidden from Google searching in the printed/analogue world. Clinging to the edges and fringes of popular tech-culture – like VHS, or cassette tapes, or Aertel/Ceefax.

Christ, I dearly hope not. I loathe and despise him. I feel compromised and unclean even hosting his image (and giving him an audience). He makes me feel weary and depressed and angry. Why? Hard to put into words precisely. But if you cringed & flinched & vomited when you first clicked here and caught sight of him then you share my pain, and no explanation is necessary.

I taught students proper forms of address. I taught them formalised small talk. I taught them how to compose a professional looking fax. I taught them all this hideous shit and much more.

The nastiest, most cynical, most soul-sucking school I worked for was called – wait for it – "The Wall Street Institute". Classes were not "classes", but (through a master stroke of rebranding) "encounters". Classrooms were glass-walled cubicles – encouraging (so the corporate rhetoric would have it) transparency.

But they didn't encourage transparency. They encouraged self-consciousness and despair. The atmosphere was "futuristic" and dystopic. It was exploitative and evil. I quit after a month. The canteen served Soylent Green.

Company propaganda drew exclusively on stock images of square-jawed, blue-skyed optimism and can-do spirit. Images that I had to look at 300 times a day. Images that made me want to dive headfirst through the glass walls, while shooting myself in the face. Images like this…

And this…

Shot from below, with the viewer forced to gaze up at his/her betters. Message? You're a maggoty worm flopping about uselessly on your soft belly. But you could, one day (if you tried really hard), be just like these fuckers. People maggoty people look up to. Literally.

And don't forget…

…the business world is one where traditional divisions of race and gender don't apply. It's a brighter, braver place. Glass walls. Encounters. You get the picture.

A curtain prepares to raise itself…

A hideous (fur-covered) twosome – atop a grimly lit stage – are revealed…

They gaze into each other's sad & boggled eyes – communicating a weary resignation and a deep, nameless pain…

They begin to chant arcane words. "She" – garishly made up and clumsily bewigged (a demonic Norma Desmond). "He" – A proto-Shrek (brain skewered with gaily coloured pins). Hellraiser pales in comparison.

Their necks begin to extend – grotesquely. The pace and fury of their delivery begins to increase. All this before an infernal backdrop where the muddy hues of Joseph Turner meet the terrible vision-scapes of William Blake.

On and on they go. Faster and faster. Disturbinger and Disturbinger. Elastic necks at maximum extension. Screeching wails at lunatic pitch…

And then – as the audience (if there even is one) begins to lose its fragile reason and scream for them to stop – they violently withdraw their ghastly heads. Letting loose (as they do so) a long and loud sigh. An almost orgasmic sigh. A sigh that mixes brief relief with the knowledge that they – like doomed Sisyphus – must soon repeat this manic ritual.

For all time.

P.S: Animation nerds might like to learn (if they don't know it already) that the creative hand behind this (and, indeed, Gregory Gráinneog) was one Jimmy Quin.

Their movements were simultaneously furtive and frantic – erratic rowing strokes coupled with hurried anchor-dumping (said movements not done justice by the below image).

As quickly as they arrived, they were gone – leaving this monument to clandestine effort in their wake.

Now while Toiréasa Ferris' head & SF's logo may look impressively large and striking in the above photo, it should be noted that a) this is a close crop of a shot taken at maximum zoom, and, b) the Shannon is a broad and majestic river. From the banks, or a bridge, the naked human eye would struggle to gather much more than a vague impression. Of a giant-headed young woman. Trapped on a small boat.

On to the debaffling. Toiréasa is, we're told, part of "A New Generation". A generation that eschews the corned-beef-faced fugliness of traditional Irish politicking and replaces it with relative-attractiveness. A generation that, let's face it, we're being subtly encouraged to want to ride. If Adams & McGuinness are an “Old Generation"(original series) Kirk & Spock, then Toiréasa is a new/next generation…er…Deanna Troi? Or maybe not. I mean Kirk was pretty hot, and then there's the whole slash fiction thing so…um…

Anyway, location is an important factor here. For if unobtainableness is a significant element of seductive allure then you'd have to consider the above a beguiling success. After all, you'd struggle to make yourself more unobtainable than parking yourself in the middle of a river. Sinn Féin? Masters & mistresses of pop-sexual psychology.

Though unlikely to perform as impressively in the Limerick Leader's (controversial) “Candidates I'd Like to Bang" poll – Maurice Quinlivan (like other local SF hopefuls) still has explosive imagery in his arsenal.

First there's the shiny, eye-catching gold “1″ – a traditional visual that manages to both rewrite the tricolour's (troublesome orange) symbolism and make the candidate seem that extra bit special. Plain ol' black and white “1s" are hardly likely to sway a bling-obsessed youth (or so the Irish Daily Mail would probably tell me).

Then there's the “cut out and keep" dotted line (Sinn Féin vouchers! Collect 100 for a Wolfe Tones lunch box!) and the slightly puzzling “fast forward" icon.

All at sea or, or rocketing (at a trillion miles an hour) toward a bright, golden future? You decide.