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.

Apologies if you've just spurted your precious morning coffee all over your keyboard, but the above graffito does indeed say what you think it says. Take another look. Yup, it's still there.

To add an extra layer of intrigue (or, simply, seediness) I should point out that the piece was discovered beside a public toilet. Not only that, but it appears to have been written in nail varnish (a sample has been sent to the lab. Results not yet known).¹

Though the message may seem garishly clear, the inclusion of the (author's?) name "Cathal" gives us some pause for thought and reflection.²

The stray "V" in the middle of the photo could be interpreted as "Versus". If that's the case then we're left with "Cathal Vs. Vaginas are Cool" – a Dadaist spin on the likes of Godzilla Vs. King Kong.³ Whatever the case may be, it's hard to argue with the core argument/sentiment.

Following on from last Thursday's discussion of "pen-testing paper" graffiti, I also present the following (obtained from the same source):

Alvaro, it seems, has both a passionate admirer and a (possibly psychotic) nemesis. While the handwriting (and choice of implement) suggests two separate individuals, one can't rule out a multiple personality, love/hate scenario.

Alvaro I love you! Alvaro u Must Die! – It's an Almodóvar film waiting to happen.

1. I was not the discover. Credit goes to Mairéad Conneely and John O'Callaghan. [back]
2. Like a Graffitti version of the Angelus. [back]
3. It could also, I suppose, have hip-hop connotations. [back]

I'm not sure to what extent "Grafitti Studies" has (as a discipline) permeated academic institutions, but I'd be surprised if the below offshoot of the artform has recieved much scholarly attention.

The circumstances in which such graffiti is created are quite specific: customer enters a shop looking for a nice pen; customer decides to try out a selection before making a purchase; customer finds a scrap of paper reserved for pen testing and gets scribbling.

The results of this activity are usually fairly unremarkable – squiggly lines, the individual's signature etc. Occasionally, however, the customer – faced with this opportunity to express him/herself – opts to engage in some quick doodling (a spurty penis perhaps?) or to compose a cryptic/crude message.

I can never resist browsing through these scraps of hastily composed wit and wisdom. I even pocket them occasionally – as I did while buying stationery the other day. Here's a sample:

Ah Daisy and Andross (?), I hope those crazy kids make it. Let this be an enduring testament to their 4Life Luv (2Getha 4Eva).

This strikes me as from the same hand (or school of thought) as "Dave F Has A Bonner All The Time". Is it an insult or merely a statement of (alleged) fact?

This is one I intend to keep in my back pocket at all times. When the ceaseless rain and life's slings & arrows start making me blue, I'll reach for this fragment and read it quietly to myself: "Brendan Loves You", "Brendan Loves You"…

All the pain and doubt will just melt away. It's amazing what love can do.

Pictured above is one of Irish sport's most enduring images: Packie Bonner in the act of palming away poor old Daniel Timofte's penalty (Genoa, June 25th, 1990). Not pictured anywhere on this page is the moment (4 years later) when Packie haplessly flapped Wim Jonk's speculative long ranger into his own net (Orlando, June 4th, 1994).

Never mind. Even despite that rare lapse (in the dying moments of his international career) Bonner remains an Irish sporting colossus. The fact that his lively agility between the sticks wasn't matched by his remarkably stiff and rigid TV presentation style is a fact that need not detain us. We'll always have Genoa.

"Dave F" appears (I think) to share our affection for the big fella, if this graffito (spotted on Harvey's Quay) is anything to go by:

The indefinite article does, however, confuse the issue somewhat. It may not be the aforementioned "Bonner" that Dave actually "has" (all the time). It could well be North Carolina general assembly member Bonner Lee Stiller, or 'Russian' human rights activist Yelena Georgevna Bonner, or even the late American bluesman Juke Boy Bonner. The graffito remains elusively non-committal…

Even if we remove the additional 'n' in "Bonner", and get closer to what was (I suspect) the creator's intended message, it's hard to tell if the claim is intended to be pejorative or complimentary. Is priapism something to be hidden or flaunted?

While beating the election target, the Taoiseach can produce a sound and his eye give out light. The pensioners were beaten the inside to can call.

[tags]Clare Street, Limerick, Taoiseach, Fianna Fáil, Power is Matchless[/tags]

On Tuesday night, after an evening spent gulping back bellinis and spritzes, Jess and I managed to find our way back to our hotel in Venice without getting lost. Not much of an anecdote I know, but it was the first time it had happened…the not-getting-lost I mean.

Getting lost in Venice at night is exhilarating, spooky and extremely easy. One minute you're surrounded by tourists and (a few) locals, the next you're eerily alone on narrow, canal-ended streets. It's hard not to imagine that you're about to catch fleeting glimpses of red-raincoated girls/killer midgets out of the corners of your eyes.

While such horrors did not manifest themselves we were briefly stalked/surveilled by a tall trenchcoated guy with a small pocket knife. I tried reassuring Jess that even if he intended killing us it would take several hundred vigorous stabs to do the job with such a modest weapon. Strangely, she didn't appear much comforted by this observation.

I think I mentioned in the comments section of the last graffiti post that Barcelona was the most graffiti-heavy city I'd ever visited. Well, it has nothing on Venice. There's graffiti everywhere. On every street, on every second beautiful, crumbling building. I didn't spot any particularly amusing examples (possibly because it was all in Italian) but it was hard not to be impressed by the sheer volume.

Luckily, Limerick continues to yield noteworthy pieces for the archive. While strolling down O'Callaghan Strand today I spotted the following masterwork inscribed in once wet cement:

For those hard of…em…seeing it reads "David Beckham is Beautiful". Did the author realise that such a bold statement of enthusiasm would almost certainly provoke a reaction? Was that why he/she chose such a permanent and unalterable form of graffiti to make this pronouncement?

Earlier in the day I'd seen a typical "Fiona 4 Ever" grafitto where the "4 Ever" had been crossed out and replaced with the pithy "is a slut". While "Fiona" sort of set herself up for this particular fall, the creator of the above has ensured that disputing David Beckham's beauty is no easy task. One would need a chisel or a bucket of wet cement…items one doesn't often have readily at hand.

A declaration of love made concrete. It may outlive the man himself.

[tags]David Beckham, Graffiti, Venice, Bellini[/tags]

Few art critics (even the most stuffy, hidebound and be-monocled) would likely deny the legitimacy of graffiti as a contemporary urban art form. Those that remain ambivalent or unconvinced, however, need look no further than the mean streets of Limerick for vibrant and provocative proof of the form's worth.

The below graffito, for example, was discovered some time ago in an alley off Clontarf Place. The camera phone used to capture it does not really do the creation justice, but the image still hints at the "street art" riches that surround us:

Graffiti cannot, of course, be spellchecked, so perhaps the agitating artist/author can be forgiven for three misspelled words in a four word sentence. By "Laural [sic] Hill" he/she presumably means "Laurel Hill": a reputable and ever so slightly swishy (by Limerick standards) girls' secondary school. You can decipher (and marvel at) the rest of the message yourselves…¹

Other Limerick gems seen (but not photographed) recently are:

"Project is Gay": Discovered written (neatly) in chalk on the wall of the Limerick School Project (O'Connell Ave). The creator in question obviously felt that the alternative education on offer was suspiciously "fancy"…

"Shitty Pants": Scrawled on the wall of a butcher's in Little Catherine St. The notable thing about this graffito was that it somehow suggested it had been created (spontaneously) by someone on their way to work. It just had that quality. How better to express the jaded crankiness one often feels on work mornings than scribbling "shitty pants" on a butcher's wall?

Finally, while I'd never dream of encouraging anyone to graffiti/vandalise an existing "public" image, I can't say there'd be too many tears shed in this household if the below horror (advertising the "Strand" development) was…er…amended:

A conservative (yet "fashionable") young couple, stand outside Brown Thomas (!) looking confidently to their bright, self-satisfied future.

We're gonna need a bigger sick bag people…

More from the Limerick Graffiti Archive soon.

[tags]Limerick Graffiti Archive, Laurel Hill, Strand[/tags]

1. Incidentally, the text beside it seems to read "Clements have no pants". "Clements" being the crappy hole of a secondary school where I was incarcerated for several years. [back]