I’ll warn you now: I have a full mug of espresso beside me. I have not properly slept. Amiee has just informed me that she is going to get a reborn monkey baby doll and that when she comes to my house, she is going to bring the doll and I am going to have to sit it in a high chair. The baby will be called Bryana Dams, and I will be told to “Shhhhh” when she is sleeping. Bryana Dams gets very cranky when sleepy.

If you don’t know what a reborn doll is, I suggest you do some googling. We can’t explain it, but a word of warning: once you have seen a reborn, it is not possible to unsee the reborn.

Someday we would like to be successful enough that we can reward winners and star storytellers with a reborn primate of their choice, made in their own image. Wouldn’t you wish your monkey baby doll was hot like you?

The plans for Sex Chaos are well underway, and we’re going to be introducing a new booking form. Our team of experts are currently evaluating it to make sure that it is sufficiently ‘booky’. No, you will not have to put your keys in a bowl.

We’d like to thank all the teams and storytellers who came last week. Quizeadoireacht, truly you are kicking everyone’s asses. But you should also know that the Dr Leonard Sussman Project has a hunger for that belt matched only by my desire to eat the World’s Biggest Cannoli. They are watching you in the hope that you will do something that could be considered a disgrace. There’s a rumour going around that the belt was seen going into Burger King. Be careful.

Those of you who attended already know about the heist pulled by the Scary Mary McGintys, who arrived with a clipboard, some forged documents, and a fake ID reading “Official Chaos Banker”. You may remember that at our November Chaos, this same team, composed of the night’s storytellers, went around the room collecting bucks by simply saying, “We’re collecting your Chaos Bucks”. And many of you complied. This month, the ‘banker’ asked people to deposit their money in the Bank of Chaos, and had them sign a disclaimer saying that this did not constitute cheating. Smart, yes.

We still got them on personation and forgery, and both Aine Macken and Una Mullally had to do penance, but we also did not force them to return the Chaos Bucks. After all, the penances are not doled out for cheating, they are doled out for being rubbish at cheating and therefore getting caught. Similarly, if you are rubbish at outing the cheater, we will not help you. Just remember that you should only give your Chaos Bucks to Amiee, me, or one of our fellows. If you give your money to anyone else, god help you, you can kiss it goodbye. A fool and his Chaos Bucks are easily parted. Just because you paid for the Brooklyn Bridge doesn’t make it yours. (As an aside, I’m pretty sure I have an ancestor who made his pin money by doing just that.) Et cetera.

Irish Writing and Art supersite Some Blind Alleys was kind enough to post about us last week, and while they did not directly call us ‘popular’ or ‘good-looking’, mere use of those words in loose association with us went straight to our heads. In fact, here’s what happened, and I blame you, Greg Baxter.

I read the post. I get very excited. As you may or may not know, for 34 years I have been in tireless pursuit of popularity, and even though the harder I try, the less popular I become, it still does little to deter me from my chosen path. Someday, I tell you. Someday I will be popular. And then they’ll all be sorry they didn’t come to my backyard when I made that volcano. Could today be the day? It doesn’t matter that Greg Baxter has never met me, and may at most have seen a very squinty photo of me. Nor that the the post kind of indicated that Chaos Thaoghaire was really the place where good-looking people go (which is true), and there was no reference to the aesthetic qualities of the organisers (although I can assure you that Amiee is very, very pretty, and looks even more so when standing beside me). No, today, this day, a Friday, I am going to find out what it was like to be both pouplar and good-looking. I am going to dive right in.

I read the post, and then I set off for a noonday run. Down the Rock Road, looking left and right, asking people, mostly silently, “Do you know that I am popular? Do you?” I mutter under my breath: “Yes, why thank you, I have been told that I’m good-looking.” I pass a few dogs. “Hi little doggy, would you like your ears scratched by someone popular?” An old woman smiles at me. Does she think I’m good looking?

This makes a rather pleasant, if discomfiting change from my assumption that everyone is looking at me like I have just crawled out of the sea to eat their hearts out of their chests. If they do believe I am going to eat their hearts right out of their chests, they might think my penchant for heart-devouring is what keeps me so good-looking and explains why I am so popular.

Down, down, down the Rock Road I take my good-looking self, in my brand new running shoes that I was saving for a sunny day just like this one. And what a day!

Down, down, down the Rock Road, where the footpath is blocked with diggers and barricades and orange cones nowhere near as goodlooking as I am. A barrier is set up along the cyclepath, with a little sign showing a non-goodlooking pedestrian of unknown popularity and an arrow, telling me that there is only one pedestrian path, which I shall have to share with the unpopular and average-looking. At the end of this temporary barrier-marked path are five council workers. Despite the fact that I frequently wear a high-visibility vest myself, the combination of a high-viz vest and a hard hat has frequently been known to cause whoops and hollers and sometimes (sadly) strange veiled threats to erupt from their wearers.

They part. Good. At least they are polite. But I have to run through the gauntlet. I brace myself. After all, I am popular and have places to go, but I will not – today, at least – let the catcallers get to me, if it should happen. I get past the last council worker and launch myself back onto the footpath.

I dive right in.

I dive right in because the thing that the five council workers had been doing as I approached was wiping their collective brows as they finished pouring a whole new concrete footpath.

It takes a second to realise why I’d slowed down.

I hop out.

I apologise.

I let them photograph my shoes along with the damage “just so long as you block my face”, which they do. They give me a rag and some water to wash off the liquid concrete because apparently it is toxic. “It will burn your skin,” says a man.

I apologise some more. They wet more of their pants. I pour some of the water all over my shoes, thinking this will help, but it only makes my feet heavier.

All the cars that had been stopped at the Booterstown Dart station beep and their occupants wave give me thumbs-ups. It may be because they remember me from when I was briefly popular. Perhaps the fact that I am covered up to my knees in fresh liquid concrete is just a coincidence.

As I go back up the Rock Road, I pass out of the view of people who have seen me dive feet-first into liquid concrete, and I pass some of the same people I saw on the way down. I apologise, silently this time, for pretending that I was ever popular or attractive.

I run home, slowly, in concrete shoes, and in the knowledge that I have learned a lesson: for the love of all that is Chaos, people, never, ever let me think I am popular. I’m back to normal now, but it was nice to be in someone else’s shoes for a while, even just until I managed to encase them in concrete.

Before we go: Do you want to know another thing that isn’t safe?

This monkey baby reborn is still WAY too young for a banana. SHAME!