Paraic O’Donnell

In a scene from Schitt's Creek, the actor Dan Levin wears a shirt on which the word NONCHALANCE appears in all caps.

If we could but lift our eyes to the light of grace.

Bless you, sir. And although I can’t comment on your recent byline for fear of violating the sacred covenant, please know that it didn’t pass unnoticed.

Anyone can be reviewed favourably, but to be reviewed *well* requires the intercession of another talent. That’s how you get really lucky.

Patiently awaits arrival of love.

🏥 (represents patience)

Bless you, dear heart, though I cannot tell how I might have deserved it, being so much remiss in my affections and affairs.

Oh, that’s so lovely. Ans what a resplendent Dog our gracious Lady is. I have two pairs of ANC buds in hand and the heavy duty over-ears on the way. Trust me, noise-cancelling is *always* the first consideration on any excursion. xx

I think it’s rather splendid, and I’m not usually in the demographic. Also you’re clearly doing right by it.

The seventies colour palette is emphatically a vibe, and I am 100% using it as my laptop wallpaper.

Skewed view of a hospital corridor

Stripes on a hospital partition curtain

So sorry, everyone. I’ve been here for a bit, which is why I’m now missing out on all the pub day fun. It’s tiresome, but what—apart from a spectacular suicide involving a funicular and a porpoise costume—can you do? I’ll be back soon. Love and peace, weirdos.

Honestly, if it had been up to me, she’d have won again the following year just for this.

This post is not in need of additional context or citation.

Rhetorical questions; what’s that all about?

I see that Connections has its own little scoring bot now, which is nice. I’m especially tickled by this screen, where it gamely tries to piece together what those hapless meat puppets can possibly have been thinking.

What idiot called it The Lord of the Rings and not Unexpected Item in the Baggins Area?

He consumes all his media while coiled naked on the floor in a morass of sacrificial viscera, presumably.

On special at Lidl today:

• A vacuum robot
• A blood pressure monitor
• Kangaroo steaks
• A cocktail shaker
• A flame gun

If we could but live the lives that have been dreamed for us.

Jordan Peterson shows off his collection of fash-adjacent kitsch.

Wanna go back downstairs and unsee my etchings?

British Amazon ratings: A primer

⭐ : Good lord, no.
⭐⭐ : Still a no, I'm afraid.
⭐⭐⭐ : Well, if you absolutely must.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ : Fine, if you like that sort of thing.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ : Quite interesting, actually.

Spelling Bee out here rejecting the word EFFING like it isn’t literally the only available effing vocabulary item that’s even remotely well effing adapted to the panoptic effing hypercalamity unfolding all effing around us.

You might want to check again. I'm pretty sure I'm the one who's listed alongside bestselling writer Jo Callaghan.

Tomorrow!

Join @paraicodonnell.bsky.social author of The Naming of the Birds The Writer's Center !🖤🐦‍⬛💙🗡️✨

In convo w/ Tin House Publisher & Editorial Director Masie Cochran.

4pm PT / 7pm ET - Tues 1/7/25

Free, but pls register: writer.org/event/paraic...

Thanks so much, Mat. Those are extraordinarily kind words.

The Well, Actually of Loneliness.

Haha. Didn't really think this one all the way through, did I?

A still from Buffy the Vampire Slaying in which Dawn questions the reality of her existence.

When you do a demonstrably perfect joke and it gets precisely two likes.

My favourite episode of Frasier? Gotta be the one where the irresistible farce meets the immovable objet d'art.

Honorable mentions:

• The one where you get to pretend that literary novelists get on talk shows.
• The one where you get to make Americans use buses.

Just tweaking my list of all-time favourite games for 2025. One new entrant, but otherwise no major upsets.

• The one where everyone is undead, so it's nice and quiet.
• The one where you get to ride around gathering herbs on a horse.
• The one where you get to tidy up a whole planet.

Probably not ideal that I keep forgetting this is happening. In my defence, though, pretty much nothing else that's happening feels remotely plausible just now.

A crescent moon over Wicklow, Ireland

`...thinned / To an air-sharpened blade...‘

He was of the very finest. x