At Least It Looks Good from Space <\/p>\n
Author: Carl Kinsella <\/p>\n
ISBN-13: 978-1399751513<\/p>\n
Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland<\/p>\n
Guideline Price: \u20ac18.99<\/p>\n
In August 2021, many Dubliners<\/a> became convinced that the Luas<\/a> was free. The delusion ran so deep that Dublin Airport posted about it; Transport Infrastructure Ireland<\/a> contacted the garda\u00ed. The source of this strange phenomenon was a seemingly innocuous, vaguely funny tweet from the journalist Carl Kinsella. <\/p>\n In At Least It Looks Good From Space, he reflects on his achievement with ambivalence, a kind of gleeful mortification: \u201cI felt like a kid at a birthday party who\u2019d gathered all his aunts and uncles in a circle so they could watch me do a cool new trick, and instead I\u2019d whacked my head off the corner of the kitchen counter and now wanted everyone to stop looking as I quietly bled out.\u201d It was Kinsella\u2019s first tortured and tantalising taste of virality. <\/p>\n At Least It Looks Good From Space is, in general terms, a collection of essays preoccupied by what the Internet Age means for the individual and the individual\u2019s imagination. In particular, it is about what the Internet Age means for a fairly young Irish man who has OCD and is prone to various kinds of catastrophic thinking. <\/p>\n These may be lofty themes, but Kinsella proves a sharp satirist and a shrewd observer of the minutiae of Irish life. He recalls his J1 pilgrimage to New York and muses on the visa\u2019s \u201coutsized cultural imprint\u201d, its heady promise of freedom, bar work and a \u201cfew thousand dollars\u201d before \u201creturning to your Business and Economics course in UCD or your graduate job at Anglo-Irish Bank\u201d. <\/p>\n Later, Kinsella remembers the peril and pleasure of leaving Mass early, and accurately relays that the Communion provides a welcome interval during which you can make an easy exit, wafer consumed and salvation secured. <\/p>\n