Death by Foreign Satellite TV

Munster's inevitable defeat

2007-01-24T23:52:00.000Z

Well, it was, wasn't it?
Too depressed I was to write about it for the last 3 days or more. I do think that I am a hex on games that I really want to be won. Any time I went to a Waterford hurling match in my increasingly distant youth, my presence seemed to ensure that defeat was inevitable. And so it was with Munster last Saturday. I can't explain exactly how, but the tickets were acquired and into my car I leapt with joy in my heart and a Munster beanie on my head and off with me like the wind and me listening to Manu Chao on the CD player as my German-engineered automobile instinctively sniffed its way along the road like a super-fast sleek metal bloodhound all the way to Thomond Park.

It's difficult to get up in the morning sometimes, even though you know you should; even though, in fact, you know that you must or the consequences will be very very difficult to live with. And yet, that head of yours won't get up off the pillow. Why? you ask yourself as you lie there waiting for your elusively fluid notional batteries to recharge. And then you realise that they're not going to recharge, as the minutes seem to tick away a little bit faster and you realise that you must be a slow thinker because that last fleeting thought took a whole 10 minutes more off the time that waits for no man (along with tide). It was ten minutes that you couldn't afford and then , and then.. you get up because you have to, even though the body - the ruler of your life in more ways than one - has expressly forbid you not to. You get up because you have to. You have to get up but you're not ready because the motivation, the spark, the passion ... they're all absent this morning. So you get up and you'll do your best today, but it won't be enough to be brilliant so you'd better hope that life doesn't throw too many challenges today because you won't be able to deal with them when they come.

Munster last Saturday were that man from the last paragraph. They were going into a match that they didn't need to win against a very strong team that really did need to win to survive. And yet, they had to turn up for work on Saturday and defend their accursed record. Home advantage is not really an advantage any more. It would mean travelling to Dublin anyway, or somewhere (actually I'm not sure, because Landsdowne is closed too), where they've lost many games before. And yet, despite all that, they almost did it. It seemed inevitable that they were going to cross the line in those dying minutes, but it never happened. It was a shame to lose the record to those starved, cheating English cunts of all people. It would have been more of an honour to lose to, say, Toulouse. But, there's another point; Munster didn't need to prove that they could beat Leicester any more = they've done that ever since the fuckers had to cheat to win the 2001 final. And now Munster are European champions themselves.

I did experience the stinging sensation of having to go down to local pub and watch it all on a British satellite company that had hijacked the match rights and was beaming pictures of my province playing within my province to me while I was also in my province. So, I didn't actually make to Thomond after all, but a friend of mine did so I amalgamated myself with his character for the earlier chapter for dramatic effect. The Brit commentating (with his Ulster crony who was getting a horn eulogising about Ian Humphries) was a particularly cruel touch to the defeat. I have no more words to give other than those already given about my feelings on that point.

I'll leave it there. In any case, if those Leicester girls manage to beat Stade Francais, they'll have to face us again (hopefully), and this time they'll be playing a team with adrenaline coming out of the very pores in their skin.

Blasting Beautiful Bantry

2006-12-06T11:22:00.000Z

This is very close to where I live. The Mediterranean it is not. The South-west of Ireland it is. Bantry is a nice market town by the sea - architecturally typical Irish settlement with a reclaimed square named Wolfe Tone Square and covered in sandy-coloured bricks. Take the time to study the photos - it's not bad, is it? Nothing too hideous about it, is there? Pleasant, you might say? Yes, yes, you'd be right there. It's a pleasant kind of place by the sea all right.

But what about this for a big lump of a monstrosity? Isn't that one of the most hideous-looking designs for a building you've ever seen in your life? It's right beside an old anitque store in front of the grounds of Bantry House (which is pictured below so as not to avoid confusion) Wouldn't you think that any sane person whose job it is to look over plans of proposed buildings would say to the developer something like; "Yes, it will be a good addition to the town but it's a shit-ugly building and it will cause mass depression amongst people who have to pass it by every day, you see. So, you can have the permission to build it if you just make a little more effort in the design end of things - Might I suggest some swirls or flourishes to soften the stark lines?" But, no... obviously this didn't happen because the builders Murnane & O'Shea are flying ahead with it and will be finished it in about 3 months time. I've asked a lot of people for their opinion on the building and nobody likes it. Moreover, everyone hates it, in fact. For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would give planning permission for anyone to erect an ugly building lacking in any kind of joy or imagination. Anyway, it's a bit too late to do anything about it. At least the hotel will have a nice view of Bantry Harbour and all that lovely expanse of water in front of them and the mountains beyond. But, hang on! Hold the phone! Haven't the semi-literate fuckwits at Murnane & O'Shea only just gone and put in planning permission for a similarly drab-looking 4-storey heap of shit on the ground just across the road from it - on a piece of land that'll have the harbour waters right behind it. So, all the guests will see when they look out of their hotel window is a smaller version of the concrete box they're in and when people drive into Bantry from the Cork direction, they'll have to run the gauntlet of 2 hideous concrete bunkers on either side of them, blocking out light and happiness from their brains. There's already a nickname for it - West Cork Wood Quay.

Fair James Bond

2006-12-04T16:46:00.000Z

He makes a fair old James Bond, that Daniel Craig fella. He's just the same age as me too, but not as handsome, I'd like to believe. The missus thinks he's beautiful altogether, so she does. I personally don't think a whole lot of his looks; his head is a peculiar shape, for a start, far more peculiar even than my own head, but I suppose you have to be grateful for what God gave you, if there is a God. And, within peculiarity, there is very often an inherent beauty that you might not notice on first glance, or else it's the way that you notice the beauty first and not notice the peculiarity for a considerable time afterwards - normally when you get into some sort of disagreement with the person. For example, a friend of mine named ---- once was doing a strong and thick line with a girl named Alice who had a most unusually wide arse and a dramatically overhanging set of teeth. What the rest of her was like, I could not really be sure, even to this day, because those two features were so prominent that it was difficult to see beyond them. You could say that they cast a spell of ugliness and deformity over her entire face and body. On opportune occasions when Alice was out of earshot (a bit of a rarity) or somewhere else entirely (rarer still), we would take the time to point out these noticeable shortcomings to ----. We, the lads, all agreed that he was a pretty handsome fella and that it wasn't in his best interest to be seen with such an elephant seal.

We didn't put it in so many words, but the message was clear nonetheless. He understood that we only had his interest at heart, of course and took it all in his stride with a smile on his face. For he, unlike us, could not see the unattractive features in this woman, only the attactive ones. So while we couldn't keep staring at the wide berth of an arse and the cliff-hanging gnashers, all he kept on about were her beautiful eyes, her sallow clear skin, her laugh (really), and her "lovely big tits". He may have had a point about the tits - they were large-sized all right, but he couldn't see that they had simply evolved into that size solely for the geological purposes of counter-balancing her unfeasibly large arse. I thought that that would have been clear to anyone. No; nothing would do but that this Alice (if that was her real name) was a fine, sexually attractive woman who was great craic, time flew when he was with her, she could read his inner child, inventive as a Thomas Edison in the scratcher, blah blah blah... stop talking shite and get your round in! That's what one would inevitably end up saying to him. He was a bit boring when he got going about her, it has to be said.
So, it all comes down to the beholder and what's in their eyes. When I was 6th class, I had the hots for this fierce looking yoke with short hair and who had a voice like a very evil goblin. But I could see nothing but that lovely smile and that neat arse every time I looked at her - until I suddenly came to my senses one day after she had started wearing something different.

Hooray for Hugo !

2006-12-04T12:22:00.000Z

He did it again - landslide job this time and thankfully no-one calling "foul" or "Hey, all his voters are voting 5 times". Worried I might be - it's true - that his plans to alter the possible terms of office and the legislative powers of the presidential role might be a move to make himself president for life, but this is his 4th successive election victory in a country that seems to value its democracy. Chavez describes his victory as "another defeat for the devil who wants to dominate the world". American people are nice from what I've met of them, but their foreign policy sure is evil and I can see how someone like him whom the Americans have been bad-mouthing about for years (joined, on occasion by their Leading Bitches in Europe - the Brits) and who will have experienced first-hand attempts by Uncle Sam to get rid of him. Only about 20 years ago, the nearby offshore Caribbean nation of Grenada was invaded by the Americans because they didn't like the look of the new guy. So, let's hope that this is a cold slap in the face for the World Police State. Somehow, I fear that the reality in the future will involve the US getting their way and slowly but surely bringing down all the left-wing South American states to a state of anarchy like they did in the 1970's. History will repeat itself. It always does.

Fierce windy here

2006-12-03T01:30:00.000Z

The wind is very fierce down here at the moment. I only hope that it stops in time for Munster's next match next week. The return of the bould Christian Cullen beckons. The man seems to have been developing a Mohawk style of hair during his recuperation from the latest in a seemingly interminable number of shoulder injuries. It's actually quite extraordinary when you think that he was sought out in 2003 as an answer to Munster's lack of depth of star quality and although he's played quite a few times since, he's spent most of the crucial games out of action because a persistently popping shoulder. You would tend to forget that he's the record-holding try-scorer for the All Blacks. But, the point is that, effectively without the talents of Cullen, Munster have managed to overcome all round them in Europe. It remains to be seen whether the speed and turn of pace of the old Cullen will come back into the Munster game, but for the above, best to consult the likes of Barry Murphy (also back after a freakish and horrific mangling of his leg last year) or the new Lifeimi Mafi. That name is, as you can imagine, a bit of a mouthful to most people from Munster, so he has been re-christened Larry Murphy, just so as to avoid any confusion, you understand.

Too Early for the Late Late Toys

2006-12-02T10:49:00.000Z

A great annual occasion, it always was in my house when I was growing up, so it was; the old Late Late Toy Show, that is. Ah, yes. The memories are as fond as they are warm, staying up far later than I'd ever dreamed possible, being surrounded by boxes of Lemons sweets, glittering tinsel and sprigs of holly thoughtfully sellotaped to the wallpaper. The fire having settled to an impressive glow, we got out the old toasting fork and made toast by the fire with thick slices of Doherty's white bread. Mmmm! Thick white toast with melted butter! And then the ads would be over and we'd brush the crumbs off the pyjamas and turn our faces towards the true hearth of the Irish home to stare and drool over more toys.

Well, last night the Late Late Toy Show was on again. That plank Pat Kenny has actually improved on the charm stakes when it comes to dealing with children. It's still a constant source of annoyance to see him cut short the kids just when they're getting interesting and they way in which he nervously flits from one question to the next, giving us all the impression that he really has somewhere to go. Maybe he doesn't pay a visit to the toilet before he goes on air - I don't know. Even in the relaxing atmosphere of the Toy Show format, he still manages to stiffen up and blurt out the wrong thing. For example, last night he had an already nervous-looking younwan down from the audience to play against him in air-hockey for a prize (a game which he forfeited in a most craven way). Then, he gets her to "dance" with this impressive-looking robot and when he exits stage left with the girl standing on his platform, Timber-tongued Kenny says; "I don't know what you're going to do with her, but... Enjoy!".

Anyway, the kids enjoyed the experience for all the same reasons that I used to enjoy it. It didn't seem to matter to them that it was on a couple of weeks too early. Before, at least you would have had your Christmas decorations up when it was on, but since they've started putting it on so early, you're watching the thing in the middle of a sort-of Christmas vacuum. Strange. Time for a nap, It think.zzzzzzzzzz

Rendition Admission

2006-11-30T14:57:00.000Z

Well, this is brilliant, isn't it? According to the report by the specially-dreamed-up EU commission, most of the EU states were clearly aware of what was going on with the American goons going around abducting suspicious-looking people at random, tying them up, kicking the shit out of them, giving them a free but uncomfortable plane trip to somewhere more exotic but where even less questions are asked than in wealthy, civilised Europe, tortured some more, and finally killed or returned with a muttered apology - depending on whether or not the suspect would be sorely missed or whether the relatives or friends would have the wherewithal to complain about it.

Not only that, but the report also noted a distinct lack of cooperation from all the governments concerned, with the exception of Germany and Spain (who were both, paradoxically, two of Uncle Sam's biggest bitches in Europe, but Germany had one of their citizens abducted and tortured and the Spaniards have swung left and pulled out of the kill-everyone-in-Iraq campaign). Dermot Ahern - our foreign minister - was supposed to be "fuming" and "livid" about the report and he seemed particularly annoyed that the report was made public a couple of days earlier than he expected. I mean, doesn't that fact alone tell you something of the lack of morality under which this government operates? So, it was a few days earlier - that's good to know the facts sooner rather than later, isn't it? After fuming and whingeing, the miffed minister then took to "na-na na-na-na!" schoolyard politics, when he jumped on the fact that one alleged rendition flight landed in Knock. "More apparition than rendition" he peevishly pouted.

Bertie himself played the old "Well now, I'm a straight-talking honest man" card by claiming that he sat facing George Bush in the Oval Office, looked him in the eye and asked "Eehhh... George. You know that thing there where you ehhh... allegedly ehh.... choose people who look like they're going to murder a load of people and then ehh... take them away for questioning... or whatever - none of my business, mind! Well, you know that thing; they're calling it rendition or something...."
"Yup?"
"Well, I don't suppose you ever bring your ehh... guests through Irish airspace ... eh... Shannon airport, for example."
"Hell no!"
"Right. Well, ehh... dat's good enough for me, den. I don't tink we need to go bothering your people by searching the ehh... planes or anyting like dat -"
"Well, I'd sure appreciate if we didn't have to, uh... step down to those levels of mistrust. After all, we're all like family here, what with my great grand-uncle being a fan of John McCormack and all."
"Of course, of course! Ehh... how are the kids?"
"In rehab. But they're fine. You know kids - always manage to land on their feet; just like dogs."
"Yeh. Yeh. Heh-heh!"
"Well, I'd better git back to my schedule. That crazy world ain't gonna run itself, now is it?"
"No, no. Ok, then."
"There wasn't anything else you wanted me to ask, was there?"
"No... no there wasn't. Ehh... fair enough. I'd better go, too. Mustn't keep the Irish public waiting."
"Okay, then. Oh, and would it be too much to ask your people in Shannon to keep those Al-quaida protesters away. That last plane they broke cost us three million dollars."
"Of course. Ehh... no problem. Ehh... goodbye Lord Bush - eh.. I mean, Mister President."
"Bye, bye! Y'all come back now, hear?"

I know this because a diplomat friend of mine smuggled a tape recorder in his pocket when he was in the Oval Office with Bertie and Georgie.

The Americans really have the world in a vice-like grip of terror; work with us or we'll kill you, is the message, it seems. I must go to the jacks now.

Killer Dogs & Politicial Assassins

2006-11-23T14:29:00.000Z

I was rummaging through the French press in an electronic manner yesterday and came across a few interesting things:

First of all, much as I hate sensationalism - which is particularly prevalent in Ireland at the moment through the "Oirish" publications and supported by swelling masses of the idiot classes - it really is hard to resist a headline that reads "Woman killed by 4 Rottweilers". That's a headline straight out of a Stephen King book, if ever there was one. The unfortunate unnamed 23-year-old met her untimely end when not one, not two, not even three, but actually four - that's FOUR!- hungry Rottweilers took a ravenous liking to her, specifically her left arm and her head. It all happened in Villers-sur-There, near Beauvais (a place familiar to Ryanair travellers for the large shed with the marquee extension that passes for a an airport terminal building - not that there's anything wrong with it, in fact). According the local captain of the Gendarmerie - Michel Le Ray, the fire brigade were called to the courtyard house and had to terminate the lives of the four dogs with extreme prejudice before entering. "These were big bastards!" (I'm translating with liberal usage of poetic licence here) said Le Ray, holding his hands wide and his eyes bulging. "They must have been somewhere between 60 and 80kg". Now an 80kg-dog is a big bastard. I happen to know that I'm about 82kg myself, so in my opinion a mutt that size doesn't really need to live any longer, especially one that's been bred for causing terminal death. The neighbours were of the same opinion. They had already complained about the dogs that seemed to belong to 3 men who lived in the property. The mayor Christian Sadowski confirmed this, saying that only 2 of the dogs were declared to the town hall, accounting for a 50% figure of undeclared man-eating dogs. Dogs killing people is a rarity in France. In fact, there hadn't been any cases of it for ten years until a 17-month-old girl was killed by one of those dirty rotten-looking staffordshire bull terriers in June at Seine-Saint-Denis and an 8-year-old was killed in June also in Seine-Maritime by a bull mastiff.

Whatever about an animal losing the head and attacking, the calculated nature of political assassinations is very depressing. Pierre Gemayel appears to have been murdered by Syrian agents, just like the Prime Minister Hariri was. I heard old Walid Jumblat speaking to Le Monde laying the blame for Gemayel's death firmly at the foot of the Syrian president. Hariri's son saying the same thing. All of this is not good for Lebanese unity. It makes we wonder in whose real interest all of this unrest really lays. I know I'm becoming more rabidly anti-American every day, but this kind of shit does play into their hands and into the hands of the Israelis... Maybe not.

Whatever you do though, don't criticise Vladimir Putin specifically and the Russian government generally. Because if you do, you'll be lucky to suffer no more than international boycott (like they did with the Georgians) and if you're not so lucky, you'll end up shot (like the journalist Anna Politkovskaya) or poisoned, like Alexander Litvinenko. There's no other nation that so brazenly assassinates its personae non grata, is there? The Americans make sure to cover their trail pretty well, the British and the French do it very secretly and, if they're caught red-handed, at least there's a token gesture of embarrassment. But the Russians? All the clues are just dropped in a heap at the scene; a bunch of arrows pointing straight at Putin's rat-like features. And he smirks, shrugs and says (I don't speak Russian very well, so I'm partially making it up) "Did I do that? Ha ha! Prove it if you dare, or else fuck off and don't be annoying me!"

All this talk of Rottweilers and shifty politics brings me back to Brian Cowen - finance minister of the Glorious Peoples Republic of Ireland. It's so boringly undramatic presenting a CD to the media, isn't it? In the good old days, the finance minister had an attache case crammed with papers and the reason it made much more exciting television is that you know that if you could just reach out your hand and grab the attache case and open it, you would have all the papers laid out, which you could read and be party to a great wisdom. It made you drool slightly. Not like the feckin' CD. I mean, what's the point? You'd have to grab it, find a computer, put the disk into it, plug in the computer, switch on the monitor, get a cup of coffee, and you know what? I couldn't be arsed with it - I'm sick of looking at computer screens all day. But the point is that you can't grab a cd and immediately rifle through its contents. That's the crucial and dramatic difference right there. I'm going now, tired as I am of staring at a computer screen, to go and rummage through a desk and then an attache case.

Dopplegangers

2006-11-18T11:53:00.000Z

There I was last night sitting by the fire with the missus and watching television while simultaneously slurping my glass of wine in a sophisticated manner which I have honed from years of drinking and to which I have become accustomed.

When I engage in this sort of activity of a Friday night, I often end up watching that outrageously useless plank Pat Kenny (who has done something strange to his hair, I couldn't help noticing) on the Late Late Show. If some interesting guest manages to get a decent flow of conversation going despite the persistent interruptory efforts of Gobshite Kenny, then I can end up watching large chunks of the programme. My wife would have similar views on the matter, so she would.

Anyway, Timber-Features Kenny had director John Boorman and his seemingly favourite leading actor Brendan Gleeson. They were talking about the film and Ireland and how there's an underbelly to the shiny side of life here and the idea that the shinier it is on one side, the darker the underbelly is, or appears to be, or... something. The point is, though, that as I was looking at yourman Gleeson talking away, it struck me that his real-life double must be Ben Dunne. See and judge for yourselves. Which one of these 2 is Ben Dunne and which is Brendan Gleeson?Confusing, eh?

But if that wasn't difficult enough for my poor head to wrap itself around, then wasn't I in for an even larger dose of difficulty later on. Staying up even later, as I did, I found myself watching a very good film called "Romuald & Juliette" on TG4 (incredible as it may sound, this was actually released in the US as "Mama, there's a white guy in our bed"). The thing is that there was a character in it who was the managing director's closest confidant who turns out to be porking his wife on the side. This character was played by a Swiss-born actor named Gilles Privat. At least, that's what his biography says. I'm quiet certain, however, that Mr. John Delany, the current Chief Eejit at the Football Association of Ireland, had a previous acting career in France before he became CE of the FAI. See for yourselves:
Privat (if that's his real name) is the one on the left. It's either that or Gilles Privat has been engaged in an elaborate "reality TV" programme where he plays, as well as actually becomes, the head of the soccer crowd in Ireland. Actually, now that I think of it, that second thesis would explain a lot...

Curtin the Cunt

2006-11-14T07:17:00.000Z

Well, fair play to good old Judge Curtin! And, while I'm in a congratulatory mood, might I offer my heartiest and warmliest of accolades to the legal system of the Irish Republic too!

There he is, after deftly avoiding the wrath of the legal system he thought was his own toy to play with by having his pals organise what is known as a "drive around" (this name was commonly given to the phenomenon which happened a lot in Northern Ireland when an RUC officer needed arresting for some corrupt act or another and the arresting agents would then drive around until the warrant ran out) so that his arrest warrant would run out and therefore rule as inadmissable all the the juicy evidence that he had gathered on his pc for his masturbatory enjoyment. But then, when the move was made to hold a full Oireachtas committee investigation, we all thought that we had the bastard cornered, but we didn't see this simple but fiendishly clever move coming; wait until the 11th hour and 59 minutes and then... just resign! Ha! Wonderful! How clever is that? No committee to face, asking you all sorts of awkward questions like "What the fuck are you doing with all those pornographic images of children?", just a lump sum of €51,000 and a pension of €119,000 per year. Oh, and what about the €500,000 legal bill? No problem; the Republic will pick up the tab there.

It's actually possible that Judge Curtin may be innocent of all the charges made against him. After all, there is no evidence available to support the idea that he used to love buying images of children for him to drool and wank over. But, let's face it, and in the words of a fictional character from "Blackadder goes Forth", he's as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of pooh. Only, for the likes of Curtin, there will be no justice. Knowing the system as well as he does, he has managed to brazenly lead us on a merry dance, much like a fat overgrown nymph with a BabyBel, swinging through the trees above our heads, where he is joined by his legal brethern, who are equally ridiculously attired in their Brit-style wigs and gowns.

If you ever get a chance to attend a public court hearing in Ireland, you will feel a little bewildered as you strain to listen to what the dressed-up tossers up the front are actually saying to one another. Aferwards, while you're still wondering what all that was about, all the solicitors and barristers from all sides are meeting for a slap-up meal to round off a great day's business. To them, it's just a game. It's the way that they make money and that's all there is to it. The idea of justice is a notional one - it doesn't come into the order of things. It doesn't usually interfere with the business of the day.

As a judge, Curtin was a confirmed expert on the lucrativee fun and games that is the legal system. It's the old "us and them" syndrome, I'm afraid. In this case, it's us who are scratching our heads, going "How did he get away with that?" and "Why would he be so callous as to...?", while to them, it's all very logical and very normal; he operated within the law, he worked it to the best of his ability and, all things considered, and despite the personal problems he has faced and will continue to face, he has come out on top alright!

She don't lie

2006-11-09T17:20:00.000Z

I had another satisfactory dream about beating and then murdering that Padraig Harrington last night. It was a little like this one, only better. It's becoming a bit of a recurring one at this stage; I wonder if I should see psychologist about it or whether, in fact, I should simply go and kill Mr. Boring Harrington myself. For real. In real life. I feel sure that a lot of people would thank me if I did.

Anyway, I'm just a little surprised, worried, shocked, etc. about the level of cocaine availability and usage in this part of the world - a part of the world that was previously completely untouched by the white clouds of confidence-enhancing stuff. I'm talking about West Cork, and specifically about the Glengarriff-Bantry area. I'm past the 18-35 age group now (I weep as the pen bypasses this age bracket and ticks the box for the 36-50 or the 36-dead or whatever it is) but I know a girl of about 25 who says that she knows people of her age group who wouldn't go out of a Friday night to the pub or to "Cargo" (apparently the latest night club in Bantry) without snotting themselves up with some of the "white girl", or whatever the approved slang expression is. Now, called me old-fashioned, naive or just some sort of fuckin eejit, but upon hearing this, my reaction was along the lines of "What the fuck...!?...?.....??", if you see what I mean. I couldn't have been more shocked if I went to the Council offices and walked in on Frank O'Donovan with his pants down around his ankles and his micky stuck in a male badger. In Bantry, there's a whole station full of Gardai. Do they care about this ? Are they concerned about it in any way? I doubt it very much. They allow one of the area's main suppliers to deal away with impunity. He's an English guy in his 50's in Glengarriff.

Hurray for Danny!

2006-11-07T17:26:00.000Z

Great to see that the Nicaraguans are about to put Daniel Ortega back in power. Always nice to see the Americans get the 2 fingers - or indeed the one finger - from downtrodden Latin American countries that they've been pestering and lording over for decades and decades.

These fuckers waged a war by proxy against the Nicaraguans during the 1980's before Ortega finally managed to defeat them. Even this week, Oliver North is in Managua banging on about how bad things will be for Nicaraguans if they elect Ortega and how much money the Nicaraguans will lose from their Yankee overlords if they elect such "red commie bastard".

Yeah, but now the table is turning, Mr. North, you big-fuckin-eeijit-with-the-big-red-nose, and there's a wave of red that's going to engulf your empire South of the border, you burger-chomping slack-jawed hillbillies fuckwits! First Cuba, then Venezuala, then Bolivia, and now Nicaragua, despite your relentless interference. Once there are enough countries, the money will slosh around the globe in the direction of these guys and you won't be able to do a thing about it, unless of course you use your overpowering military might... I'd forgotten about that. Shit

Trick or Fuckin' Treat

2006-11-01T10:10:00.000Z

I don't know when this trick-or-treat shit got a firm grip on Irish Juvenile Society but I am disappointed to have children who have got trapped in its adhesive quicksand, so to speak.

From their point of view, I can see how it's virtually impossible to resist - organised begging, wearing scary masks, guaranteed feast of treats. It never ceases to amaze me how addicted children are to sweets and treats of every kind. They're like junkies going around the place, demanding to know when they can get their next fix. e.g. "Can we eat them now?" "Can we eat our sweets before breakfast?" "Can we eat our sweets after breakfast?" "Can we eat our sweets before lunch?" "Can we eat our sweets after lunch?" "If I give you the wagon wheel, can I eat them now?" It's tiresome, so it is. For a bit of diversion, this year someone somewhere in the school or the village organised a children's Fancy Dress Disco. The after-disco analysis, I noted, focused solely on the amount of sweets (or "gear") that the kids could score. Hopefully, it will be replaced by nothing more potent than alcohol when they're older.

This year, I didn't dress up myself and go to the door with them. Instead, I waited patiently in the car with the engine running while they worked the houses. I didn't need to stress the importance of manners too strongly to them; they know that a pleasant smile and a "thank you" will ensure a good supply of goodies next year and will even ensure an increased supply of the real stuff and a reduction in the quantity of fruit in future Halloweens.

Anyway, the whole thing leaves me grumpy as hell. I was tired last night and the last thing I wanted to do was drive around in the cold, avoiding darkly-dressed gangs of children and looking at bags of sweets that I couldn't get my hands on. And another thing... What the hell does this "Trick or Treat" thing mean anyway. I have conducted enquiries on a broad range of children and none of them know. As far as they're concerned, it's just a thing they need to say in order to get sweets. Maybe it's just the American dream coming over to haunt us. The whole Halloween thing is traditionally strong in Ireland, so maybe this is a purposefully perverted version invented by the CIA or some other such shady imperialist organisation. Yes, that's it. They go around inventing ways of tapping into the greed of people around the world so that they will obey and follow the American way, making it virtually impossible for them to ever see America as anything but a benign, friendly nation. So there we are all smiling hypnotically while not noticing that Uncle Sam is behind us giving it to us up the mucky boreen while laughing his head off. Clever.

Win-win Situation for Munster Men

2006-10-29T01:45:00.000Z

Fair play to lads from Munster - another win today and by a comfy cosy margin to boot. Still monitoring my feelings on an ongoing basis and I'm still feeling angry and annoyed that I can't watch my province play live against another team without paying a foreign satellite tv company for the privilege (those shitbags at Sky have the rights hijacked this season), but I find the County Sound commentary very entertaining. The passionate commentary is delivered with all the irresistible gusto of an excited man bursting into the pub to tell you that he just caught the biggest fish ever to swim in water on top of hearing that his wife just gave birth to twin boys. I don't know his name but he's D'Unbelievables meets man on the sideline during a hurling match who jumps up and down excitedly. Great to see young Barry Murphy back on super form after his match against those dirty rotten cheating bastards of Leicester langers. Here he is above in a tough tango from last weekend's match...

All this watching people playing sports on tv makes me feel a bit lazy and not very fit. And, of course, it doesn't really help when I'm swilling stout as I watch it too. The missus just dozed off as I looked over the lads' impressive performance while slurping my home-poured pints in a sophisticated manner. I'm definitely getting up on that bike tomorrow morning, and if conditions are favourable, may even have a dip in the water in this mild late autumn we're having.

Biological Warfare off the Irish Coast

2006-10-28T02:15:00.000+01:00

In the course of my work today (I had a day that was far from boring, thanks be to God, but the rain was persistently pouring all the live-long day), I met a man who told me the reason behind the cutting back of American planes passing through Shannon airport on their way to the Middle Eastern colonies of the US Empire.

He said that the Americans were basing planes at Shannon and then testing some relatively mild chemical weapons (although the porcine brucellosis in question would give you severe stiffening of the joints, according to my man) in the Atlantic offshore, away from prying eyes. The Irish government discovered this, so they insisted that the Yanks take their nasty circus elsewhere. Well, I find it hard to picture our limpid government insisting on anything to the US government, apart from insisting that they love them very much and insisting that they can have whatever they want while their bands of butchers are in town.

The same man insisted that he knows that chemical weapons were used by both the Iraqis and the American-led "Bitches of America" grouping that bombed the shit out of people back in 1991. One of the things that the Americans were after and one of the things that they hoped would constitute a "smoking gun" to justify their wanton slaughter this time around, was a good batch of the chemical weapons that they actually sold to Saddam in the first place. But these things have a short shelf life and they disintegrate quickly. The yanks learned the Chemical weapons business from the Japanese at the end of WWII. The Japanese had been the first to use anthrax on live Chinese human bait at the beginning of that conflict and, similar to the bounty of German scientists that helped the space programme, the Western front yielded the reward of Japanese experts in biological warfare - something the Yanks then sold on to Saddam back when they considered him relatively cute compared to the bold bold Iranians.

He didn't seem crazy - all very interesting. On a totally unrelated topic, I'm thinking that I may well go down to the pub to watch Munster hammer the shit out of Bourgoin tomorrow evening.

Men with caps

2006-10-27T00:40:00.000+01:00

When you're driving on the road, there are a few hazards that you have to watch out for: The first thing, and one that always gives me heebie-jeebies, nightmares and the tremors all wrapped up in a cold sweat is ... cow(s). One is enough to do some nasty damage to your nerves and your car in one sickening, bloody thump. A whole herd of them suddenly appearing around a bend in a country road, and you're fucked; you've nowhere to turn, you see. They're all over the road, so they are; moo-ing in their whiney forlorn voices. Oh! Don't get me started on the cows. I haven't ploughed into a herd of them yet, but I seem to know an inordinately high number of people who have, so I can't help getting the feeling that my turn will come soon.

Bovine terrors aside, the next most dangerous thing (and on certain occasions, I sometimes think that it is the most dangerous) is the man with the hat. Watch out for and be wary of such a man if you see him on the road. He's about seventy or so. The age is difficult to determine, but what will mark him out is the way in which he drives, trundling along at exactly 60kph and thinking about a cow or something, all the while remaining entranced and oblivious to the world around him generally, and to you hoping to overtake specifically. The large cap is held in place by large satellite-dish-like ears and I now believe that the cap contains his brain, so it isn't functioning correctly as it's not being kept at the correct temperature to allow it to work properly. You'll notice that his reaction time is slow and he tends to hedge his bets by driving at an equal distance from both hedges - i.e. bang slap in the middle of the road. This style of driving serves the double purpose of allowing him to see further ahead on the road and also to prevent anyone else behind him exceeding 60kph.

Here endeth the lesson on men with caps who drive. Just keep an eye out for them; there are many of them in Ireland, where they are as plentiful as cows, but don't produce as much milk.

No Mass Appeal for me

2006-10-23T07:29:00.000+01:00

A difficult time arises in the life of an agnostic when he's faced with a choice of whether or not to bring his child to Mass.

On the one hand, I have grown to despise the Catholic church and all its dirty deeds, its nonsense, its bullshit, its determined protection of the guilty and its persecution of the innocent (specifically in relation to acts of sexual perverts amongst its ranks). I accept that there are many nice priests and bishops who just want to help people by giving them a comprehensible spiritual code in their lives in the knowledge that it will enrich them or help them to cope with incomprehensible and head-wrecking notions such as death, but... I'm afraid all I can see when I look into a priest's eyes or when I look around a church is just a large powerful institution that will cling grimly to its power base for as long as the earth turns. They're running out of suckers here now that we're all educated and well off and couldn't be arsed with their hokum. So, the fertile recruiting grounds for members are in the dirt poor places - Africa and the like. There's an incredible power of persuasion built into a pitch to a guy lying in a gutter. I don't want much to do with these phoneys if I can help it and I don't much fancy the idea of my children being taken in by their nefarious wibble.

On the other hand, my wife is one of those who thinks that "it's good to give them some sort of religion" and when you're in a small overwhelmingly Catholic community where every other kid in the class is having their first communion, and your child wants to do it because everyone else is, then you have to come up with convincing arguments to deny him this pleasure.

Well, I couldn't, really, so I find myself having to go to that wretched Mass shit if I want to play along with the whole Holy Communion thing. The other Sunday at Mass, I was already slightly on edge from the combined factors of mild hangover coupled with the expectation of Munster's first European Cup match coming up later that day against the Langers from Leicester and the irritation that I'd have to go to the pub and listen to Brit commentary on a Brit tv station if I wanted to watch my province play. Anyway, as it turned out, we won, so that should keep those wankers quiet. As I was saying; at this Mass yoke, as I looked around the church and at the priest, who was hoo-ing and haw-ing away at the pulpit in a saintly pose with the head tilted to one side, I began to get increasingly angry at the whole set-up; at me - look at me! the hypocrit! Kneeling down with my knuckles clasped together before a marble collection of holy paraphernalia and stained glass windows and a holy-Joe of a priest and his gang of pawns answering his prayers, and I knew the answers myself but I wouldn't say them! And I thought; well, why won't I say them if I've gone to bother of going to Mass in the first place?! And then I looked at yourman beside me, I stopped being angry and watched him go up to the pulpit and do his little reading, which he delivered very well.

P-p-p-p -pickups!

2006-10-20T00:48:00.000+01:00

The new wave has started. At first, there were just one or two, but it has now become a bit of a wave, really, if I'm to be honest about it.

I had a similar feeling back around 1992-93, when I began to notice that competition amongst farmers to get themselves "a fine jeep" was getting testy to say the least. One by one, the Volkswagen Jettas began to disappear and were slowly being replaced by the larger all-terrain vehicles; the sort of yokes, in short, that could just as easily drive over a muddy field and sheep carcasses as drive along the main street in town, leaving a trail of deposits from said fields on the uneven Irish asphalt.

Back then, the higher vehicle was a new thing, so it was. For farmers, they felt right at home sitting up high, looking down curiously on those they didn't know and saluting those they did. It called to mind driving through town in a tractor. Only, this wasn't a tractor. At all. It was fancier, warmer, it had a radio, some day it might even have a television, it could drive faster, it didn't make you bounce up and down banging your head quite as much as a tractor did, it had electric windows, it actually had windows, it smelt nice. A fine vechicle, so it was.

Then there came a gradual change. Whispered stories came from America that over there, ordinary regular people would be seen driving these vechicles, even though such vehicles were obviously designed with the farmer in mind. Yet these were being actually driven around by townies - just to show how much money they had and just to drive around in a cleaned-out version of a farmer's vehicle just because.. whatever! Fuck you! Wow. That really captured the imagination, so it did. Live the American dream right here in little old Ireland and get yourself big fat wheels with a big bastard of a vehicle attached.

Since then, the enormous gas-guzzling 4x4's have become de rigeur on the roads of our confused Republic. They've become the staple diet of those who want to propel themselves around at speed in a wasteful amount of transport space because they're worth it. This avaricious market segment has been getting itself bored and has been on the lookout for something new; something perhaps even bigger or even more wasteful. What about a large jeep which has a long extension at the back into which you put absolutely nothing! Totally fucking excellent! That's what I want, alright!! Shut up and give me the bastard! Behold!
Here you are - this yoke is multiplying so fast around the roads of Munster that they must be fucking each other. I know one woman who crams her five children into the cabin with no seatbelts while all the while she has enough space for ten more behind where there aren't any seats. Ah well, at least we have freedom of choice.

Resigning with Resignation

2006-10-16T16:15:00.000+01:00

I had to laugh just while ago there when I read that Sweden's Minister of Culture has decided to resign after just a few days in office because she completely and totally forgot to pay the bloody television licence. How many times has that happened, in fairness? Where you're ambling along in life, doing the daily routines, minding your business; combing your hair, eating your toast, washing your toes, cutting the lawn, spying on the neighbours, calling the cat, burying a dead body, surfing, drinking some beer, when... all of a sudden doesn't the tv licence inspector turn up at the door and asks you where's the tv. And, of course, you're there closing the front door, shouting "Get away or I'll call the Guards! You're not a tv licence man!" through the letter box, while simultaneously screaming at the children to close all the curtains, while all the while resolving to buy a tv licence tomorrow. You didn't want to be in this upsetting situation - you just forgot, that's all. We all forget things, like getting stuff in the shop, like whoever's birthday or anniversary or whatever - I forget.

Now in the case of Cecelia Stego Chilo (for that is the former minister's name), she had forgotten to pay the licence for the last 16 years. So I suppose you could conclude that she's so forgetful that she has no business being a minister. I mean, if she's that forgetful, she might forget to come to work some day, or even most days, in fact. Or, she might forget who she is altogether and go around the streets naked and looking for money for her pet cat's eye operation, or something. In fact, with a name like Cecelia Stego Chilo, I suspect that she's forgotten her real name, because that's not a very Swedish name, is it?. You really wouldn't know with someone that forgetful, would you? That's the point I'm trying to make.

She was minister number two to resign from the same government. Her colleague over in Trade - Maria Borelius - resigned the other day because didn't she go and buy a house a while back through a Jersey-registered firm and, guess what, it totally slipped her mind to pay tax on the bloody thing! Well! If I had a half a euro for every time I've done that, I don't know whether I'd be in heaven or hell at this stage!

I'm surprised to find such a concentration of forgetfulness in such a relatively small group of Swedes. I always got the impression that they had so little to worry about there, that they had no problem keeping their minds focused on things. But maybe that's the very problem there. Maybe, it's because they don't have to worry about doctor bills or schools or pensions or anything that they become a bit docile, or even, stupid. Maybe if you reduce the number of things to worry about, you become more relaxed and, by extension, more forgetful. I notice that when I forcibly reduce the number of things that I worry about, I get more relaxed and I can't remember what happens next. Interesting.

Forgetfulness is a disease common in Ireland too, and particularly amongst Irish politicians. Poor Bertie hasn't a notion what happened to him at all from about 1980 up to the present day. Money was coming into his accounts and into his hand before he had accounts and God only knows where it originated. Friends, obviously, but what their names were, he just can't remember. Maybe if a few heavies from Fine Gael, the Green Party and Sinn Fein (they'd be the ones with the knuckle dusters and baseball bats) got him in a room and showed him pictures of friends, it might jog his memory.

Time to wrap things up: I had something else important to get down on paper there, but I've forgotten what it was.

Munster Madness

2006-10-15T04:03:00.000+01:00

So they've finally lost at their Thomond Park fortress...

Well, this day was on its way, so to speak. But the fact of the matter is that it didn't really have to actually arrive, so to speak, and if you know what I mean. What I'm trying to say is that you wouldn't mind so much if the record was to be knocked off of its pedastel by a fine strong bastar of a team from France or England or wherever. But, the fact of the actual ma I'm too exhausted; I'll finish this thought in the morning / afternoon .

Feeling better now - even for a Monday morning. Well, I think the thought that I was trying to get to was that, apart from the double-blow of losing Paul O'Connell and Ronan O'Gara, there seemed to be a lack of confidence in Munster. I think that this is just the beginning, unfortunately. I think, I''m afraid to say, that there is a growing, troubling realisation amongst the players and staff alike, that they know they've done wrong; betrayed their fans, their people, sold their souls at a cheap price... however you like to put it, it all adds up to the same dirty, dirty thing. They've jumped onto the Greed Express now, leaving the sports fans toiling in their wake. It just makes me angry and more besides.

Election Tissues

2006-10-12T16:57:00.000+01:00

Now that we have an election looming (and, curiously, they also have a presidential one looming in France. I don't know if that's the kind of thing that happens on purpose due to Euro-standardising or if it's just coincidental), I think that it's high time we all started to demand things for a better Ireland, isn't it? We should start setting the agenda, pushing it into place, getting it dressed up, combing its hair, de-lousing it, whatever; getting some tangibility into election issues. I, for one, will be pushing for the addition of the letter "t" to be placed directly in front of the issues. This will instantly allow such intransigent, slippery, indefinable things to become tangible, useful things. This is very important if we are ever to get a grip on issues as they arise. If they're not tangible, then how is anyone ever going to get a grip on them? Not possible, really. Think about it - just for a second before you read the next sentence... Tissues are very important in this colder, wetter sort of weather that we've been having of late. I'm going through a fair amount of tissues at the moment, and on a daily basis, so I could do with as many tissues as possible; not the stupid scented ones, mind; they're only for queers. I'm talking about the normal ones, the ones that you wouldn't be embarrassed to produce in public. We all need to insist on 4-ply strength too. I had a horrible and very messy accident last night with a 2-ply packet I bought (no, actually herself bought) in Lidl. I was a little emotional after the soccer and the beauty of it and the goal from Kilbane that was like a fragrant young flower sprouting out of an old heap of shit, and then the other goal coming so soon after and the huffing and the puffing and the near miss from a man whose best form is dearly missed and.. well, let's say I just had a heavy cold and it made my eyes weep and my nose run. I wiped my eyes with the 2-ply. Ok so far. I blow on the nose into the 2-ply and... "Fuck sake!" I shout, making the kids jump, "Look at this shit!" Like a man trying to extract a messy piece of toffee from his nose using a piece of toilet paper, only it wasn't toffee.
I screamed some more, I ran out of the room, and.... the rest doesn't really matter. I think that I've made my point on this matter, though. It's not all fun and games in the world of tissues, so it's no harm at all, no matter what your religious persuasion is, was or will ever be, to highlight these and all types of tissues with your local politician; you need something that you can get a hold of. Vote with care for people who care. yes, that's it. If nothing else, make sure not to give your vote to people who care only for themselves. It's hard to spot these people because they look and sound very much like people who do care about the Republic. And, by the way, don't be afraid to use that word "Republic". One of the few good things of permanence that Bertie has done is to try to instill the very idea of a Republic back into minds of our citizens. It's a good thing - don't worry. And we don't need to apologise to the Brits about it. I know a lot of them mightn't like it, but many of them do. Anyway, the stole our land, so that's the why.

I must check the label on those anti-biotics; I don't think the whole course was meant to last only a day and a half.

All Change...

2006-10-11T23:29:00.000+01:00

All is changed, changed utterly...
A terribly strange sort of peculiar kind of class of an inexplicably unexpected kind of wonderful sort of kind of, well... beauty has been born, in a sense. Let's hope it lasts, Staunton, you feckin' eejit!

Terrified of the Czechs

2006-10-11T16:09:00.000+01:00

I'm afraid that I am; terrified, that is, of what's going to happen to us tonight at the hands of the Czech national soccer team who have made a point of coming here to our fair country from their remarkably clean and tidy country with pretty towns such as Cesky Krumlov and Prague. They come tonight armed not so much with lovely beer, but with dangerously lovely football skills and a run of impressive wins.

These are indeed trying times for an Irish soccer fan. At this particular time, try as I might, I cannot see any conceivable reason as to why Ireland will win their match tonight, as win they must. But they won't. The blind are being lead by those blind to any form of motivation (apart from a fat salary an expensive house in England and an Essex girlfriend), who are in turn being led by Steve Staunton. All very worrying and confusing. Steven "Eh-im thu Gaf-fur!" Staunton is lucky that he has some excuse in the fact that his team has actually been hit by a mysterious, sort-of inexplicable and unexplained injury plague. So mysterious it is, in fact, that he'd nearly want to check that he hasn't got a boy with a disturbing and vacant look on his face called Damien hanging around the training sessions. But even taking into account the disease of damage that has afflicted his squad, it still doesn't explain how Ireland has turned into the Liechtenstein senior citizens mentally retarded special needs team. Not really.

The game in Cyprus was a curiously entertaining one. It was such an astonishing match that I found it completely absorbing and utterly compelling; how many goals can these goofs score against us? 4? 5? More....!!?? When Cyprus scored their 4th, I laughed and cried simultaneously like a joke machine thing where you press the button and manic laughter comes out and it vibrates in your hand (if such a thing exists - I dunno). The children moved out of the living room altogether after that, huddling in the comfort of their mother in the hallway while I continued speaking to myself using words, mime and hand movements and increased the speed of beer ingestion.

So, I suppose the next emotion in this intriguing merrygoround of emotions brought on by the recent travails of the national football team, may very well be anger. I saw Stan on the tv again last night and when he mentioned "I'll take it on the chin.." in the context of bearing responsibility for the Cyprus disaster, all I could think about for a fleeing moment was swinging a fire-extinguisher at his large chin. Now that my (very relaxing) summer has ended and the start of the Heineken Cup is fast approaching, my anger levels are also increasing as I know I'll soon be faced with the dilemma of either (a) subscribing to that wretched crowd of "Sky" (pardon the language) cunts.. (b) going to the pub to watch it... or (c) sulking at home, preaching to the family about the evils of greed coupled with satellite tv. Ohhhh.... it's enough to make your blood boil, so it is.

That's it - work today was incredibly boring - even more boring than yesterday. I'm off home to drink beer / wine / Southern Comfort in front of the tv and will focus my expectations on an entertaining analysis from the RTE football panel.

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Bantry Fair Day

2006-09-29T13:37:00.000+01:00

In the town of Bantry by the sea, there is what's locally known as a "Fair Day" every Friday. It used to be the first Friday of every month, but lack of any sort of organisational legislative sensible, organised approach to leglislation on the matter has meant that it's far from organised. In a nutshell, what I'm trying to say is that it's a bit of a mess, where every nutter empties the contents of his attic and possibly his bin, and tips it onto the lovely square, which is made from sand-coloured Belgian stone. It's actually not so much square as a kidney-shaped thing, but that's beside the point.

Amongst all the dross (which is incredibly varied, I'd have to say), there are still some good things; some great things, even. For example, a bunch of foodies have now taken over the stretch just off the square along New Street (which is, effectively the main street, but not Main Street, which is perpendicular to it) and they sell a super range of stuff, which isn't exactly cheap, but not exactly mad dear either. You can buy yourself a fine 6-course meal with desert and coffee and then go onto the square and eat it, chuckling to yourself as you survey the trash. The rest of it is the usual mixture of clothes, shoes, tools, books, geese, other fowl and, of course the obligatory selection of items stolen by itinerant salesmen from a variety of premises elsewhere in the country.

But, above all else, the unbridled and unregulated Bantry Fair illustrates quite clearly how underdeveloped our whole republic is. Those who took over the reigns of power of the fledling state in 1922 didn't really do things whole-heartedly, I suppose. Anyway, the thing is that there is almost no town in Ireland that has real political autonomy to simply look after itself in a property day-to-day manner. Even the capital Dublin doesn't have a proper set-up for self government, with an idiotically-titled "Lord Mayor" (another depressing hangover of British rule) who can never stay in office long enough to actually see through any project.

Anyway, for the time being, I'll enjoy the disorganised chaos of the Bantry Fair.

Technorati Stuff

2006-09-27T15:56:00.000+01:00

Nothing much happening today, except that Technorati rules...

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The Town I don't love so well

2006-09-25T01:28:00.000+01:00

Dunmanway is a town that I never particularly liked, and, since that incident at their municipal pool some months back (see "NOT a Pervert" blog), I've been festering an ever-deepening resentment and putrid hatred for the place and all of its inhabitants.

If you don't believe me, take a drive through it some time. Like a lot of places in Ireland these days, it has an inexplicably neat and sort-of invitingly clean facade about it. But that's just what it is; a facade. Catch the eyes of the locals as you drive through. Observe the twitching curtains. Observe the Deliverance-invoking eyeballing stares you get. It's a place where a new bridge has been widened or made (I can't remember which), yet 10 metres away, a crucial junction remains with its road unmarked for about 10 years now, so that only regular users of the road know that the main road to Bantry swings right and the road that appears to go straight on is, in fact, a more minor road that goes to their yokel-infested hotel and somewhere else after that. In Dunmanway, the boy racers drive about at speed in a completely unhindered fashion, driving as fast as they possibly can from one end of the town to the other to meet their fellow boy racers with whom they talk shite on their mobile phones without fear of fine or penalty points. It's a place where the Garda Síochana (Irish for Keystone Cops) are even more invisible than they are in other Irish towns, because their superiors force them to live in a pigsty of a condemned building.

I may not be an oil painting myself, but then neither are any of the Dunmanwayans that I've seen. To say that they're all inbred might not necessarily be true, but I would reckon that about 98% of them are - and it's only the influx of Polish and Latvians that's keeping the statistics at a relatively respectable level.

If you still don't believe me, then go the swimming pool some Saturday morning and just observe how they park. Even though there's a large car park around the back, the Dunmanway fuckwits dump their cars along the entrance road. They don't even have the sense to park them parallel to the footpath; they plonk them perpendicular to the path to ensure that they make a proper job of blocking traffic. I tried glaring at a few of them yesterday but got only vacant inbred stares into space in return.

When you read accounts in the paper about civil wars, you often hear about atrocities where such-and-such a village was levelled and where such-and-such an ancient building was razed and a nice lawn established over it. And you think; "What sort of inhuman scum are they?!" But the truth is that they are perfectly human. I, for one, know exactly how these military commanders feel. Yesterday, for example, as I seethed driving slowly through a West-Cork town called Dunmanway, I found myself praying for a civil conflict; the only possible scenario, I think, where I could get away with bombing the shit out of Dunmanway and wiping the snot on the nose of humanity that it is off the face of West Cork.

Great Golf-Crashing Gales

2006-09-21T00:33:00.000+01:00

Isn't the weather wonderful? We've just had the calmest, warmest, driest, sunniest summer that Ireland has known since 1995. So the montonous droning bores that think golf is fun have been planning to host the Ryder Cup tournament in Ireland for years. Years and Years. Padraig Harrington himself has spent so many countless nights lying in bed in his jim-jams (the one with the golf clubs and love hearts on it) dreaming of the day when all the rectal, whooping, overfed fuckwit American golfers would come over to Europe to join their equally lobotomal European counterparts for a mind-numbingly overwhelmingly boring bore-fest.

But all that intricate planning can't account for the weather, for which there's no accounting for. I laughed like an evil maniac this morning when i saw some golfing "fan" squinting and softly lamenting at the state of the weather which prevented him from going out on the course to see his heroes sigh deeply and whack a small white ball. Squinting and softly lamenting is what golfers and golfing fans do, whether a hurricane destroys the club house and lays waste all the unfortunate "players" caught in the storm, or whether they've just missed a put by a centimetre. Playing golf and watching it on tv (which the plain people of Ireland will not be able to to do, as they've sold it all to that Sky pack of cunts) does dull the brain, as is evidenced by the sloth-like demeanour of any of these fuckwits that you see either in conversation or on the television.

So, with a bit of luck, these warm storms will continue and the whole stupid uber-bore will be cancelled. Personally, I find it all excellent weather for skinny dipping: the water's fine, there's no-one else at the strand, and the warm gales dry your body in no time.

George "noo-ku-lur" W. Bush

2006-09-19T23:48:00.000+01:00

I don’t really like people who mispronounce things. By things, of course, I mean words. Mispronouncing words is not a good thing, generally speaking. There are a lot of fuckin’ eejits out there who live long lives and die without coming around to the realisation that the word “what” for example, is not pronounced “wha’” or “I have a cat who sleeps in a cot” is not pronounced “I go’ha ca’ who lives in a co’”. I know that these are specific enough examples but they’ll be familiar to the average Irish man (or woman), although not, perhaps, to the fuckwits who talk like that.

Anyway, the point is that there’s a man who makes regular appearances on the telly and who is an important leader of a large important country which goes around smiling and making friends with countries they like, while establishing their companies and persuading the relevant ministers to give them tax breaks until people get wise to their shit and tell them to fuck off and then they go to a country more desperate for their money, and with the countries they don’t like, they send a large army of fuckwits with expensive military gear who listen to death metal music while they butcher them with a sort-of Hicksville-style slack-jawed indifference. This fella has been mispronouncing things for years now, and someone has surely pointed it out to him on more than one occasion. He probably pays people to point these things out to him, in fact. Yet he still feels no shame whatsoever in standing up in front of the world (the real world, mind, not America) in the UN Chamber (please move it back to Geneva) and talking like a right fucking eejit about Iran’s “nu-ku-lar” programme (or should it be “program”). Nobody bats an eyelid. It really does say something about the state of fear that the rest of the world is in when not one of the hundreds of delegates stand up and say: “For fuck’s sake! The word is nuclear! Nuclear! Nuclear! Say it, you fuckwit! Say “Noo”. Now say “Klee”. Right, now say “Ar”. I don’t know… I’m grammatically concerned and terrified at the same time. There is no war. They make it up. America has now descended to requiring a constant state of war just to exist. It has rabies. Stay away. This warning was issued 50 years ago by Jean-Paul Sartre. Nobody heeded it then, and it remains unheeded today.

Lashings of Lebanese

2006-09-15T13:44:00.000+01:00

I know someone who knows someone else who knows the right person, with the result that last weekend, even though I can ill afford it, I ended up staying 3 nights with my best girl in the rooftop penthouse in one of the best hotels on the Croisette in Cannes. In addition, the car hire company had run out of little peugeot 205's or similar and instead upgraded us to a large Mercedes saloon, so hurray for fortune!

Anyways, neither of us had ever eaten Lebanese food (apart from the odd Taboulet), so around the corner we went to a place that seemed popular with the local Lebanese ex-pats and sat ourselves down. The missus has no French to speak of or to speak with, but the waiter says "I can speak whatever language you like - i am very clever." Now as I looked around the place on the street terrace, taking it all in puffing a cigarette, I noticed that everyone working there came from the same family - uncles, cousins, etc. They also looked exceedingly relaxed and well fed. So, it was no surprise that they considered it "normal" to give us as much food as they did. Twelve dishes - all containing some salad and a sprig of mint - came out pretty much at the same time. We began to divide and eat in between sips of wine. By the time the 7th one was done, we were beginning to feel very full, then they hit us with a great big fucking plate of cooked chicken and lamb. Then, at the end, one of the younger lads actually forcibly brought us across the road to where his uncle had a whole shop full of "baklava". Well, fuck me pink if I didn't almost explode with the stuffing I had that night. I felt like a goose on a foie gras farm.

The next morning, I vowed never to go to Lebanon or to another Lebanese restaurant again. I still managed to pack away a decent amount of breakfast though.

Four x Four Feckers!

2006-09-07T14:11:00.000+01:00

I remember getting a spin in one of those behemoths once, no there was another time now that I think of it. But the thing is, each time I got a spin, I was happy to find that it was most uncomfortable.

I was trying to sell a broken-down house (probably to some gullible Brit) for a cute hoor from Cork who had a four-by-four vehicle. At the time, I used to do this sort of thing for a living, you see. Anyway, I don't remember what make of yoke it actually was, but it looked very sleek and powerful from the outside. At the time, I used to admire these vehicles and, to a lesser extent, the people who owned them, God help us. Before mounting the yoke, I stood back and said "God, but that's a fine vehicle!"
- "It cost enough!" He professed in a tone markedly tinged with regret and delivered from the side of his mouth that was planted around the middle of his red face.
- "I'd say it did, now." says I, giving a conspiratorial wink as I leaped energetically inwards, narrowly avoiding a potentially painful collision between my head and the frame of the doorway of his impressive automobile.
I sat smiling with satisfaction for a moment, taking in the height from the earth's surface, the leather on the seats and the dusty debris that littered the cabin. Oh, my! This was living! It felt like being high on a dusty seat on a cushion of air, if one could possibly dream of such a thing. The big bastard of a diesel engine snarled into life and she began to move along the relatively smooth public road.

But, guess what? It began to bounce and throw me in every conceivable direction. I had imagined that with this much height and power, all bumps would be absorbed by the time they travelled the considerable distance from the road surface to your arse. That should be the idea behind such a design, I would have thought. Surely, says I to myself in my head, that is the very reason why these large yokes exist in the first place. But, no; not the case, as it turned out. In fact, the opposite is true - The bumps and lumps are magnified with distance, much like the way a film projector might magnify the size of the image on screen.
"Are we there yet?" I enquired hopefully, as I bounced off the roof of the jeep and landed on his left shoulder.
"Another bit-een East of here and we're right," He explained helpfully.
I hurriedly closed my window for fear of being bounced out onto the unforgiving rugged stone-scape of West Cork.

The second time was a little better, but that's only because I was drunk and I was in the back of the thing, with 3 other drunken people who were able to cushion my repeated falls. I do remember that it was a Land Rover, though - a new type one that looks really comfortable from the outside.

The whole point of this perhaps seemingly pointless meandering is to get across my puzzlement as to why these things are so popular. It seems to me that people with large egos need an extra-large vehicle in which to drive them around. 15 years ago, it was only farmers that had them, but now the majority of the jeep-users are those who don't need them. The fact is that I couldn't afford one of these things (or maybe I could - I haven't made the necessary enquiries) but if I had money to spend on a fine car, I'd get something really fast and comfortable and not too expensive to run.

In this country, we've gone from openly taxing people to doing it by stealth - not a good sign for any republic and not a good example for the younger citizens. No, no. I think we should be more open about it again and tax the shit out of the four-by-four fuckers who guzzle around in their ridiculously over-sized contraptions.

NOT a Pervert

2006-09-03T09:26:00.000+01:00

I have 3 small boys of my own and they attend swimming lessons every week at a public pool not far from where I live.

Anyway, last year, I had been bringing the lads for a few weeks in a row and my wife happened to be working, so she was missing out on their heartening progress (ahh... it would make you cry, so it would; like watching them learn to walk all over again, although it does scare you a bit to see them able to swim with better technique than you and thinking it's only a matter of time before they'll b able to pass you out in the pool).
- So, says she, why don't you take the camcorder with you to the pool?
- Really? says I, Don't you think I'll look a bit weird?
- Not at all! says she, sure I'd love to see them swimming.

So, I agreed to do it.

Off with us to the pool - me and my three ducklings, as I sometimes call them as a joke to their faces. They don't find it funny. Anyway, in they go - the 2 older ones in the big pool and the little guy (who's 5) into the baby pool.

So, anyway, I'm there in the public viewing area that overlooks the pool, videoing and waving back to the lads, who do like being noticed and admired by their father. I'm thinking : "She's going to love this, so she is." After racking up a good 20 minutes or so of top class footage, and as I lower the camera once again, a broad smile of satisfaction on my face, the woman who's sitting on the seat next to me leans over and says "Ehh, excuse me, but are you going to be doing that for much longer?" indicating with her scabby finger that by "that", she meant using the camcorder. My blood ran cold at this point because I recognised it as a confrontation and my normal reaction in any such confrontation would be to run away at speed. "Well," I said "Why? Is it bothering you?"
"Well yes, it is. It's just, like, in this day and age, you know, I wouldn't feel that comfortable... you know..."
I stared blankly at her for a second, before pointing out that I was filming my sons and I indicated where the three of them were around the pool.
"Yes, my little daughter is there too. If you don't mind..." she added with a painful persistence.
Now, what the fuck was I supposed to do? On the one hand, I can understand the paranoia of some parents, who are by their nature, constantly scouring their known worlds for dangers of every sort and discussing them in grand detail, focusing in on the horror headlines of the British and Brit-style tabloids that they're stupid enough to pay any attention to. So, I reserve a certain amount of sympathy for them, even though they've possibly conditioned their minds to believing that they're living in South-East England, when in fact they're living in peaceful West Cork.

But, on the other hand, I was angry with this open accusation of me. This bitch had just labelled me a pervert. She felt uncomfortable, but without thinking logically, she had decided to dump her stinking bucket of discomfort on top of my head and stuck a label saying "Pervert Suspect" on me for good measure. And anyway, even assuming that I was a pervert (which she obviously did), what did she possibly imagine that I would do with images of children swimming in a public swimming pool? Did she think that there would be a perverts' market for such a thing? I mean, it wasn't like I was filming in the dressing-room, for fuck's sake!

So, what I felt that I should have said at that point was something like: "Oh, which one's your daughter? Is it the one in the sexy yellow number or the little hotty with cute arse beside her?"
However, instead I succumbed to the fact that this dimwit felt uncomfortable and switched off the thing. I spent the remainder of the time glowering with the humiliation and the stupidity of it, while she rattled away talking to her stupid friends.

The next week, there was even a notice at the entrance "No camcorders allowed". Paranoia has set in and it's here to stay. People are too thick to look around them and engage with their immediate environment and they imagine that they are under attack, living as they do in the fantasy world created from the conditioning of their constant use of foreign media. They don't have enough respect for their fellow citizens to counter their fears.

The perverts have won.

Oh me achin' back!

2006-09-02T08:58:00.000+01:00

Let me tell you - it is a sore thing. Got up, and everything was fine, went to work. Sat in a chair. Went to get up and,.. Jesus! It was sore and continued all day long like that until I got herself to rub deep heat into me later on in the evening. Much better this morning; downing Arnica tablets like a map fucker all day.

But every time I get a back pain, I always think of that public safety ad of many years ago about a character called "Big John". He was big and powerful and a cheerful country-and-western tune told us how all heavy objects were just a "a barrel of fun to old Big John. But he never gave a thought to his back-bone...." and then John would go "Oh, me achin' back!" After repeatedly doing this at the end of every verse, for the final verse, John delivered his lines from the hospital bed. He sadly turned his face to camera and delivered his final line with mighty morososity, if there exists such a word.

A wonderful advert; informative and entertaining and a series of images that give a helpful insight into social and working life in Ireland of the 1970's, where everybody wore long hair, beards, bell-bottom jeans and emigrated to Britain. If that advert can be bought, I'd pay good money for it now, if I had it.

My back is feeling better already.

Explosive Night on a Donegal Island

2006-09-01T17:03:00.000+01:00

Back in the crazy, extra-warm summer of 1995, when it was about 35 degrees every single day (or so it seems in my mind's eye), I experienced a near-death experience, so I did.

The day started with the usual blazing sunshine on the island of Inishfree Upper. This was not a normal summer, so it wasn't. During normal summers on Innishreed Upper, you would have each day greeted with a little rain and a little wind, mixed with some cold. But anyway, after checking the growth of my week-old beard and the skankiness of my sun& salt- bleached hair, I puffed out my chest and exited through the creaky door to inhale the revitalising scent of the sea. After a short fried breakfast was prepared by others and eaten by me and others, it was decided to head inshore for some supplies. This was usually code for "going to the port for some early beer and not forgetting to buy a loaf of bread and whatever else was on the shopping list that the girls had prepared before going back to the island sometime later".

Well, the sea was as calm as a labotomised Buddist monk that morning, which made our thirsts more pronounced than usual.

I sat with my 3 companions outside Ned's, reading in the Irish Times how the Croatians had been preparing all along to kick out the Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia and that they'd fucked them up goodo. Someone mentioned between slurps of stout that there was a festival on in Inishmore that day, so after another couple of hours involving drinking, talking rubbish and playing pool, we decided to move the bandwagon offshore. We got a lift on a half-decker over to Inishmore and on the journey I remember meeting some charming crusties with whom I shared a bottle of whiskey.

After that, things went a bit hazy, but suffice it to say that by the evening when I somehow ended back in the house on Innishfree, my world had become a very different place and I would estimate that I was the drunkest I have ever been and ever will be.

We all retired to the living room (there were about 10 in all), where talk was had and the fire was lighting. The candles were also lighting as there was no electricity on the island then (although there is now). I quickly fell into a sort -of coma. Around midnight, the fireworks on the mainland (to mark the end of the Mary-from-Dungloe Festival) were set off. These could be seen and heard from the island (only 2km away across the Bay) so everyone went out to see the show, leaving the door ajar. Repeated vigorous efforts were made to rouse me from my deep and dribbling slumber, but all were unsuccesful. With each little explosion and flash, everyone went "Ooh!" and then "Aah!". The house was by the beach and they stood admiring, ooh-ing and aah-ing on the strand with their backs to the house. All of a sudden, instead of a "pop!" or a "crack!", there was instead a thunderous-sounding "BOOOM!" and the funny thing was, it came straight from the house. They all turned around to see flames and thick smoke emanating with alarming energy from the room in which I was sleeping. Inside, I remained sleeping without having moved a centimetre, while burning debris and smoke was falling around me. The candles on either side of the fireplace had, with the assistance of the breeze from the open door, burned the frill which set fire to the timber mantle piece, which then began to burn with a real vengeance. The whole place would have gone up if it weren't for the little ancient tin of gunpowder that was on the mantle piece, which when it exploded, alerted the fireworks-watchers to what was happening inside.

The next morning, I awoke with a peculiar cough and a sore throat. The moral of the story: you never know when a little tin of gunpowder will come in handy.

Les Acadiens et leur Musique

2006-08-31T13:34:00.000+01:00

Or, in other words, Acadiens and their music. Having dined in the new and interesting surroundings of the Sheep's Head Inn in Durrus last night, and my tummy suitably full of scampi and whatever else I mixed in with the dark brown stout, over the road I tottered in the pouring rain to Ross's. Only the toilets are new and shiny in Ross's. The rest is pure Irish, which is a good thing, so it is. The people I was with included relatives and can't be named for some reason or other, but the thing is that they were smoking cigarettes. This is not what it used to be in Ireland and you have to go outside nowadays to smoke. I stopped about 2 or 3 years ago, but I did have some last night, it has to be admitted. Luckily, Ross's has the old canopy thingy that can protect from the sun as well as from the rain, so we were able to huddle and puff without getting soaked.

Anyway, as the night wore on and the laughing got louder, we noticed that there was live musique coming from the other room - the main bar. It sounded like traditional Irish music - which I do like, especially when the old head starts to loosen up and swing from side to side in a liberal fashion as a direct result of the amount of alchohol sloshing inside the brain that lies therein. That last sentence went on a bit too long, so I'll start again: It sounded like traditional Irish music, but it was being played not only very well, but also very quickly. The rythms were a bit different. Our toes were all a-tapping and we nodded our heads in unison and verbally acknowledged to one another that this was indeed fine music, so it was. (It was really a very civilised evening). I leaned my head over and used the 3/4 ful pint in my outstretched left hand as a counter-balance so that I wouldn't fall and do myself an injury, what with my head being so top-heavy with porter. When I was sufficiently leaned over, I was able to get a clear view of the musicians. They were slightly more tanned than your average Irishman. One had a squeezebox and the other a guitar. Two girls were sitting with them. I noticed that the fella with his back to me had a tee-shirt with "Tour du Monde" on it, so I deduced that they might be French. One of the girlies passed me on her way for a wee-wee (I assume; i didn't actually ask her to confirm). "Hey." says I to her in fluent French, "Are ye French, are ye?" "We are, says she, "...from Brittany, in fact. Are you French?" "I'm not," says I. "I just speak ye're crazy language fluently."
Anyway, without going into the whole conversation word-for-word, it turned out that the music they were playing was, in fact, Canadian - from Quebec province. She went and did her thing and re-emerged refreshed to sit beside her musical colleagues once more. In they lashed to another furiously-paced tune. They then downed their instruments and sang another emigrant's lament type song in mariner's style called "La Virginie".

Anyway, I'm going to stop now because my tummy is very sick today and I don't think that all the porter has fully cleared out of my head yet.

Circus's Nowadays

2006-08-26T15:20:00.000+01:00

I've just been to the circus with "toute la famille" as they say down South.

Say what you want and scoff all you like, but there really is nothing quite like the excitement of the circus coming to town. I've seen a few over the last few years and many of them don't have much going for them in terms of quality of presentation, general hygene of the employees, lack of exciting and/or dangerous animals, etc. I'm happy to report that this circus was, however, just about the best one yet. Duffy's Circus is the nation's favourite and has survived the many problems that beset such a cost-heavy production in the modern Ireland. I suspect that many circus's find it just about impossible to keep the show on the road in these times, but Duffy's have adapted and rolled with the slow punches. They've teamed up with none other than the Chinese State Circus, so the quality of athleticism is fairly astounding, it has to be said. Last night, I witnessed a woman who put her arse on her head! - I am not exaggerating, and... ok, so it wasn't the most clever thing that she did in her performance (she balanced all sorts of stuff including a large quantity of lit candles) but it seemed the most anatomically impossible to me. In fact, I have no doubt, that if she wished, she could actually stick her own head up her arse. I imagine that sort of thing would go down well in the likes of Bangkok or certain establishments in Limerick, but not here. Anyway, although the arse-on-head trick represented the pinnacle of the show in terms of achieving the technically impossible, there was lots of other acrobatic amazements too. And, most important, they did have dangerous animals. Not one, not two, but in fact 4 tigers in the caged ring with a man and a woman. I didn't feel secure about the amount of snarling they did, particularly the more grizzled one on the far right. He always looked just one more poke of the stick away from turning the whole show into a bit of a bloodbath and although I looked around most carefully, I couldn't see any sign of a man on standby with a gun. Some youngfella who fancied himself as an Indiana Jones stuck his head in a crocodile's mouth.

So, the magic of circus-time is not gone yet. All the circuses need the cheap foreign labour to survive, it seems, but Duffy's has stolen a march on the rest by getting the very best there is in that market.

Roll up. Roll up.

The Boring and Invisible Ryder Cup

2006-08-18T12:30:00.000+01:00

I had a horrible dream the other night. In it, I was being punished for doing something of which I was entirely innocent and for my punishment, I had to play golf. Now I consider that punishment enough for any man, but to make matters worse, I had to play against the devil himself. He was all afire and leaving worrying scorchmarks on the grass (or the "green", as golfers themselves call it, the boring bastards) where his cloven feet trod. I had to win in order to avoid further and painful punishment and the trouble is that I wasn't any fecking good and he seemed to have been practising - a lot. It was 2 against 1, though, but the nail in my punishing coffin came when I realised that my partner was Padraig Harrinton. Now, on the one hand I was glad to have him on my side because he's a top-class player (or so I'm lead to believe by the bores that watch this shit), but whether I'm or whether I'm wrong, I regard him as the epitome of boredom. Mr. Harrington is, to my observant mind, Tedium Personified. As we walked boringly, slowly from one "hole" to another "hole", Harrington was giving me an earache with his verbal hairy elephant dung, such as "I'm a fit guy - I like to stay in shape." and "I wasn't really comfortable standing over that hole", all delivered in that monotone drone of his with that miserable effort of a smile that seems to be fixed onto his face, tanned from walking around and spending his ridiculously huge pay on sunny holidays and the like. It's actually quite typical of the professional golfer, so it is - all of that.

All the while, the devil is ahead of us, getting on with the game and making great progress with birdies and eagles and pars and whatever else they have in this "stupida fucking game", to quote the Neopolitan hitman from the Sopranos. And the bastard devil is laughing at me and my predicament, struggling to cope with this travesty of sport and all the time being driven to distraction by this babbling idiot beside me.

To cut to the chase, the dream ended well, with me beating Harrington to death with the club and the devil joining in to deliver the final coup-de-grace, but I'm trying to address the issues raised in my reverie.

Perhaps I'm feeling a little insecure because I know so many people who think that golf is great and that the Ryder Cup coming to Ireland is the most exciting thing ever. But, what kind of a sport is it? It's not really a sport at all, in my mind: all that walking around followed by a slave. It numbs the mind and the fuckers are overpaid. Part of the reason why the greedy bores are so overpaid is because they sell the television rights to satellite tv companies who can get all the money back by sucking it out of the fans of this crap. I don't know how an Irishman like Padraig Harrington can hold his head aloft at all when he's involved in this skullduggery - part of bringing this big occasion to Ireland, where the national broadcaster can't show the stupid thing on television. Take the club to the Sky box and the satellite dish, then bring the remains to your dealer and say something like "I'm mad as fuck and I'm not taking it any more!!". That should do it.

Swimming wear for men

2006-08-17T23:47:00.000+01:00

Ahh, yes! That old nutshell: the men and their swimwear debate. Yet another summer of puzzlement have I endured (and it has been, might I add, a really really nice summer in the Southwest of my dear country, so it has), staring aghast at the multitude of baggy shorts on men of the same persuasion as me. I have scanned the beaches for sight of proper, sensible swimming garments that are small and made of lycra, but they're now extremely thin on the ground. In fact, if anything, they're getting even rarer on our beaches. At least, on most countries on the continent, it's the youngfellas that wear the stupid baggies, while the more mature man - the man who's levelled off and comfortable with his sexuality - tends to go for the optimum option of the Speedos. But in Ireland, the disease of the baggies is well and truly widespread, entrenched as it is in the beach-frequenting culture of once-great Republic.

I'm afraid it's time to blame the Americans again. They weren't content with starting the trend of creating a flashy entertainment show to replace the news. Oh no! Now they've single-handedly started a baggy shorts revolution that has rapidly undone all the hard work of the sexual revolution of 40 years ago. I strongly suspect fundamentalist Christian labotamy-brained fuckwits, as I like to call them. Check out this website, for instance. Like, who in their right mind would (a) come up with such a business idea, or (b) actually buy the feckin things ? This can't be just "market forces" at work here; it's far too sinister for that. There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, so there is, so there is.

I hadn't even noticed that baggies were taking over the world until my wife pointed it out to me and pleaded (actually pleaded!) with me not to go out on the strand wearing "those", as she called them. I think she associates them with pot-bellied middle-aged men. I might be approaching middle age, but I'm still blessed with a slim figure and fine arse (so the wife tells me - I don't know). But anyway, that was 15-20 years ago and people still haven't figured out that the emperor has no Speedos and instead is wearing stupid feckin baggy shorts that are as ... stupid looking as they are not aqua-dynamic. Imagine Pieter Van den Hoogendband (if that is his actual name) lining up for the next big race wearing baggy shorts! That's be the end of his record-breaking, I can tell you! And the end of his dignity. He'd be hard-pressed to get the ride that night, so he would.

So, men of Ireland, I implore you! Men of Britain, the same to you ! Men of France, Hommes de France, je vous en supplie! All the other men of Europe and the rest of the world, listen up! Burn the baggies! Be wearing your Speedos with pride! I'm considering mounting a campaign (after I've had a chat with my legal eh... team) of terror on unsuspecting baggy-wearers, involving pulling down these offensive garments, thus exposing the wearers to further ridicule in an effort to make them understand how ridiculous they are.

So get burning, donning and pulling down! The revolution starts now! Viva la Revolucion!

Rotten Apples

2006-08-06T20:36:00.000+01:00

Deeply depressed as I was after Waterford hurling team falling short yet again, I turned my back to the assembled crowd of whinnying Cork fans in my local pub (I have the misfortune during these dark times of being a Waterford-born man resident in the County of Cork) and muttered to my wife to gather the children and drive me home... please. 2 pints of pain under the belt at that stage, so I couldn't take any chances, you understand.

Anyway, after a good old sulk in the scratcher and a fine square meal at home, I topped off my recovery with bottle of lovely Erdinger Kristall Klaar - beer of beers - and a game of soccer with the lads.

The point is - and I'm slowly getting to it, but it's been a traumatic day for me so bear with it - I was reading this article in the Sunday Tribune about the company called Apple and the fact that there's something rotten going on with it. Here's a company founded on instinctive hippy creativeness many years ago by college dropouts or one colleg dropout and his friend or similar anti-establishment sort of slant. And they're American, of course, like everything important in this world, and the college drop-out headhunted this sharp American-style capitalist bastard from Pepsi-co - just to make sure that Apple became really shit-hot and blew the competition out of the water - and, guess what? The capitalist bastard actually takes over Apple and turfs out the former college drop-out (who, we fear at this stage, has become the quintessential American capitalist by this stage anyway) on his ear on the "sidewalk" (as they say in the States) and, guess what again? Mr. Capitalist-former-Pepsi-bastard, having first fucked out the creative genius behind the company and got comfy in the pdg's chair, now proceeds to actually run the company into the aforementioned "sidewalk". Meanwhile, Jobs gets busy getting incredibly rich on spotting the potential of a little company called Pixar and makes a triumphant return to the company he founded in 1997. Well, there's no point in telling you what happened next. If you haven't heard of the Ipod and all of that, well, stop now and read something else.

So, now that they're really successful, they go and move their factory to China. The things are being made in sweatshops by people being paid a pittance in a country whose human rights record makes Cuba looks like a model of perfection. Quality suffers and so does their image. but, guess what? Apple doesn't really care any more.

I don't have an ipod but I have recently begun buying music on itunes. And, I have to say that I am mystified as to why there is such a poor selection online. They don't actually need a massive warehouse to store all the albums, so they should have a selection to blow all competition in planet earth-type shops way out of the water, so to speak. But, guess what yet again? They don't. The other day , I went looking for the Talking Heads album "Stop Making Sense", having re-discovered an old decrepid tape of the album. They don't have it. They have about 3 Talking Heads albums. This is a well-known, American mainstream group. There wouldn't be any point in looking for anything even remotely obscure and non-American-Brit-mainstream. In fact, I tried to buy Manu Chao's difficult 2nd album (not a patch on the 1st "clandestino", by the way). Not available on the Irish store (where "clandestino" is also conspicuous by its absence) and not available in it's French store. And, guess what? Manu Chao is actually French!

So, Apple doesn't impress me. It had everything at its feet and now it appears to be blowing it through not caring, disinterest, arrogance, and good old-fashioned corporate American greed.

That's it. I'm off to bed for an early night.

Deliberating over Deliberate Crimes

2006-07-27T08:38:00.000+01:00

Pity the poor people of South Lebanon; when they finally get rid of the Israelis in 2000, they then have to put with the rise of Hezbollah and the influence of its Syrian mentors. Now they're being deliberately murdered wholesale by the Israeli army.

What is with this Israeli state? Do they really have to murder all around them to survive? Imagine if we all took that attitude... No, it's not a nice picture. Even when they deliberately kill a bunch of UN personnel to get them out of the way so that they can continue to clear the whole area, the UN can't actually condemn it for what it is. Instead, our good friends the Americans and their "bitches in Europe" the Brits block the UN from making a true statement to the effect that the Isralis deliberately murdered its own personnel. So then, the Israelis turn around and say "The world agrees with our operation and won't condemn it." What a load of ... I don't know. Here's an interesting story I heard from a former Irish soldier who had served in Lebanon - I was shocked at the time, but it only serves to corroborate the kind of stuff I've heard from the limited number of Palestinian friends that I've known and whose testimonies I've always considered as about as reliable as, say a Catholic from the Falls Road describing British foreign policy.

Our soldier friend tells me that he was at a roadblock when a small Israeli patrol in light armour approached the UN checkpoint and says: "Let us through there, my good man. We wish to go after some bold guys." Yourman says no, that no foreign army is allowed to go through the checkpoint. So, our Jewish friends go back, and, guess what? Don't they return a few hours later, only this time they have many more soldiers and a large tank. The Israelos demand to invade Lebanon temporarily in order to go after people they considered bad, but our Irish friend and his comrades don't let him. The cannon is aimed at the checkpoint and the lid of the tank opens (I presume you call it a lid) and out pops what my friend described as a "Dublin Yid" - who shouts in a strong Dublin accent: "Get outta the foockin' way or I'll blow your fookin' checkpoint into fookin' smithereens!" His shocked fellow countrymen granted the bastards their wish. "Why did you let them through?" I asked.
"Because they were going to destroy our installation."
"But did you not complain to your UN commanders?" I asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
"Yeah, we did. But nothing was done, because the UN is controlled by the US and they're the Israelis' biggest allies."

Mainly on the Plain

2006-07-18T07:43:00.000+01:00

Very little rain to be had at all in that country of Spain - at least that was my impression of the place having just visited it for the first time. The Costa Brava is a byword (or bywords?) for excessive tourist development and hoards of beer-swilling British and Scandinavians I know, but my Rough Guide Directions guide book led me to believe that it was this description was unfair and that it was much better than that and that all that business had kind-of calmed down anyway, seeming to suggest that all that crowd had de-camped to Ibiza or something. That was a very long sentence, so it was, but the point is that, first of all I like long sentences. But, the second, and more relevant point, is that the original description is one that I find to be the most accurate. Sure, there's rugged beauty to be had all along that coastline and it is nicely hot too - that's true. But, I just didn't warm to the place in the same way that I warmed to the Italian or French Riviera. I am inclined to blame Franco for the sorry mess that I think the Costa Brava is in. In the 60's, you couldn't really argue with him if he decided that such-and-such was going to be done. "Necessitamos muchos grandos, feos y sucios edificios para todos los turisticos que viendren a nuestro pais!" he would shout at the Catalonian councillors, banging his fist on the nearest hard object and farting simultaneously. But no-one dared laugh as they knew that he'd have their balls for breakfast (probably with some apricot jam) if they did, or if they spoke back to him in Catalan. So, built they were and I think that this practice of riding roughshod over people's concerns has left a general lack of concern for their local environment. Maybe I have the place all wrong, now, and stop me if that's the case, but here's an observation; I have considered for some time, that amongst Ireland's faults was a lack of civic sense of duty and littered and untidy towns and villages. But the Costa Brava area definitely has a lot more of that than I would have thought possible for what is a wealthy progressive place, by all accounts.

The other thing was the people. I was expecting a thoroughly friendly, happy-go-lucky bunch of Mediterranean folk, whose strong sense of independence made them even friendlier than the average Spaniard. What I got was a crowd who seem to want to keep to themselves very much and just don't seem to give a shit about you. Maybe I was in the wrong places: maybe on the Costa Brava, everyone is weary of foreigners. Maybe, I look a bit weird (I don't really! Ha ha!). Maybe they're just unfriendly fuckers. One thing I'm sure of; despite the faults of Ireland (about which I do whine from time to time), I know that if you were in an underground city car park in the sweltering heat with a bunch of irritable children and wife and your battery was flat, you would have a team of men to push you to a start within a few minutes. I had this experience in the beautiful city of Girona recently and it took about an hour of trying to stop people before finally one lady embarrassed her husband into helping.

Anyway, enough of all that blather; wasn't that one hell of a great World Cup? And the final was a cracker - particularly for a final, which are usually not one of the better matches. My eldest boy, who's 10, was extremely upset at Zidane's sending off. He didn't even want to shake hands with a nice ould Italian fella with whom we had watched Italy's masterful performance in the semi-final against Germany, such was the level of his sense of disgust at the cynical tactics of Italy. And, I have to say that I would come down pretty much on that side of the argument myself.

Ireland my Arse

2006-06-27T10:37:00.000+01:00

You know, while all of us here are getting very excited watching what must surely already rank as one of the best fifa World Cup's in living memory (mine goes back to the 1978 tournament, by the way), we do have our national team playing a tour of Australia and New Zealand. In this case, the sport is rugby, of course. But you would hardly know that it was going on, because not only does it coincide with the much more exciting World Cup (and you'd really have to feel sorry for the lads on the team not being able to sit down in the evening with a beer in the hand watching the soccer), but it is also completely absent from the tv - from my tv anyway. I noticed that it's on Sky Sports all right. I mean, what is this shit? How can a private foreign-owned satellite tv company be showing my national team playing for my country? That they even have the right to do it without my express permission is bad enough.

Dump your Sky box - use it as a bin, if it's possible. Just switch off from these people ; they're evil and if you sign up, then you're just an ignorant monkey; you're their bitch who's keeping them in pocket and creating ridiculous fortunes and oversized egos for the sports stars that this system corrupts.

That's all for now. I'm not happy with the world.

Team Support Down Under?

2006-06-21T08:14:00.000+01:00

I read in the papers that the Irish rugby team are doing a pretty good job down in the Antipodes (I believe you call them) - which is to say in New Zealand and Australia. Still, close is not close enough and it is extraordinary to think that the national team has failed to do what Munster have done (i.e. beat the All Blacks). I also read that Brian O'Driscoll says he is confident of beating Australia.

"I read"! This is gas, isn't it? I'm reading about it because it's not on television. I, as an Irishman, cannot watch my national rugby team play in this series of matches on national Irish television, so instead I'm reduced to reading about their exploits. Actually, the Irish team seem to play even better when you imagine them playing, but that's by the by. The main point of the matter is a far more serious one. This is a retrograde step indeed, where, unless I agree to pay a sleazebag foreign meglomaniac for the tv rights that he has hijacked and now monpolizes, I am reduced to reading about it in the papers and hopefully tuning in to a radio station that will carry it. Like some poor fucker in the 1950's. Some progress, huh?

Well, I do hope our national team does us proud. If they do win, at least I can read about it in the papers.

Too much wine...

2006-06-03T00:37:00.000+01:00

Too much wine does make the old spin a bit, not to mention the tummy, churning away for days afterwards, as it does, like a dirty ould cement mixer.

Well enough about my alcoholic habits and more about the world in general. Did you know , for example, that there is huge interceltique festival (pronounced "fess-teee-val) held and to be held every year since 1971 in Lorient, Britanny. Lorient is a place that I've been in, so I have. It's architecturally naive, to say the least. In fact, it's definitely one of France's shit-ugliest towns, so it is, mostly on account of the fact that it underwent some refurbishments courtesy of American and Brit bastard bombings during the course of World War II. Of coure, they'll say that it was all a necessary part of liberating the country from the Nazi opressor and it's hard to argue with that, but how many of those young, wet-behind-the-ears bombardiers didn't drop that extra bomb just to satisfy their innate and inbred sense of anti-French? France is a country of many pretty towns, and no-one appreciates more than I do, coming from a country where all those important centuries were obliterated, leaving us with a cultural blank space from the 1300's to the early 1800's and not much else until 1916, so.... (and I apologise for the long bridge there) it is hard to comprehend the raison d'etre of a town like Lorient, where the streets are totally charmless, except for the lovely people that inhabit them. And they are lovely people, so they are. All nice and friendly and Irish-loving; my kind of people, even though I've just described 80% of the population of the earth.

Anyway, back to the grand festival. Well, i haven't been to it yet, so I don't know what I'm talking about, but I did manage to get a press pass to the thing this year, so off I go and I'll tell you about it later.

Hooray!

2006-05-22T18:33:00.000+01:00

Well, I've just about begun to settle down after Saturday afternoon's excitement. I don't know if I'll even bother to try and put into words how I felt, what the thing meant, the streets, the crowds, the beer, the beer, the beer, the tears, the pain, the relief, the agony, the joy, the noise in that fucking stadium must have been unbearable, I believe. I couldn't get to Cardiff myself, but the brother had bought tickets back in January. "You gotta have faith" he texted to me as the final whistle went and fat tear drops plopped in metronomical succession into my beer. What a jammy bastard I thought, sniffing and wiping away excess fluid with the back of my hand. Well, on reflection, that wasn't jamminess (if such a word exists), rather it was simply a little bit of forward planning. But still though, what a jammy little bit of forward planning that was. And wasn't he the jammy little fucker to think of doing that !

What an occasion for a team that represented the hopes and dreams of a province - of a nation even! The players and fans carried around the flags of Munster and of Ireland. Sky Slime lapped it up, of course, along with their willing bitches in the ERC. According to one reporter from French sports daily L'Equipe, this was the occasion when rugby outplayed soccer for the level of occasion, the level of noise, colour and celebration, with a superb game of 2 teams at their peaks battling it out below. Even though I was watching my team play on our own national television station, after-match interviews came courtesy of the Sky slime team. They didn't even wait until next season's kick-off: they were already swarming all over the pitch, microphone in hand, chattering with insane excitement as though they were all on high-performance, colour-enhancing drugs.

Saturday was a moment to savour, whether experienced in the Millenium or in the bar of a West Cork hotel. It was an occasion, a sporting occasion that brought the province and the nation and half of Europe together. But this was the last time that we'll be able to experience it like that: this was the last time that this occasion can happen like this. If Munster win again next year, most of the people won't be watching it. It's as simple as that. It's a cynical attempt by Sky Shiteaters Inc to get people like us to pay them for their turgid package of channels which contain so much excrement, that it isn't physically possible to sit and watch even a fraction of it. A new generation of young kids will grow up in Ireland wondering who the hell is Ronan O'Gara. Make it stop. Get in touch.

Death by foreign satellite tv

2006-02-19T22:12:00.000Z

First of all, I just want to get one thing off my chest. Like the inspiring and sometimes annoying George Hook, I am an angry Munster fan. I put up with paying high prices to go and see our heroes perform in Thomond Park or on foreign fields in Britain or France. I put up with the pain I put my family through when I have to leave them for a whole weekend of drinking and singing debauched rugby songs in English or French (I’m not joking here – this is actually quite a wrench away from my family, but I’m loyal to Munster). I even put with the fact that I pay over €80 for a jersey of modest quality that’s made in China by people being paid 2c a week under the orders of a New Zealand-based company and which also forces you to go around as a billboard for Toyota.

What is unacceptable now is the fact that, from now on, we’ll have to pay a foreign satellite company a subscription for a load of crappy channels that I don’t want just so that I can watch a team representing the hopes and dreams of my home province. That’s not right.

The government can do something about it, but it refuses to do so. All it has to do is simply add Munster games to the list of sporting things of cultural significance so that they are not available to be prostituted on the open market as if they were prostitutes.

Anybody else feel the same about this sick state of affairs? Make your voice heard.