Archive for August, 2008

Is there anybody out there?

August 18th, 2008

Every now and then I get the feeling that the world has come to an end, and they have forgotten to tell me.

All my clients have gone suspiciously quiet.  The world of blogging seems to have nearly gone to sleep except for the intrepid few.  I’m not even getting any spam mail.

It reminds me of the time when I worked in Hawkins House in Dublin.  It was a horrible building, full of offices and a couple of government departments.  There were regular bomb hoaxes there, usually on days when I wanted to go home early.  One day, there was an actual bomb planted and for once, it had nothing to do with me.  The place was evacuated, but they forgot to tell me.  I never discovered whether this was by accident or design.  I was working away in my office and realised that everything was very quiet.  I stuck my head out the door to find that the place was deserted.  I went looking for someone to see what the story was and met a bomb disposal bloke who politely asked me to get the fuck out of the building fast.  I did, and went for a pint in Mulligans before going home.

So what is going on?

Are the flood waters rising and is my lofty mountain going to become an island? 

Was I right to apply for planning permission for a marina at an altitude of 600 feet?

Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?

Or do I have to wait for the bloke from Bomb Disposal?

Freedom of speech

August 17th, 2008

I have been a harsh critic of America in the past.

One aspect of American Society I have always admired though is their freedom of the press.

They are not even afraid to field awkward questions from the Russians about their response to the 2001 attacks.

 

Buy your kinky stuff here

August 16th, 2008

When the European Economic Commission was formed, we all thought it was a good idea.

It was a nice little trading club of a few countries in Europe.  You know the kind of thing – you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

One day, the word went around that the EEC was to ban carrots if they weren’t straight.

Oh, how we laughed.

This was a great joke.  Imagine outlawing a vegetable because it had a kink in it!  After all, mankind had been eating weird shaped things from the dawn of time.  It had to be a gag by some reporter with a sense of humour.

But it wasn’t.

They outlawed any vegetables and fruit that didn’t conform to strict standards.  From now on, we were to only get Aryan produce.

I could never understand the reason for this.  It is true that it made life easier for packers.  Carrots are easier to slice in bulk if they are straight.  So it would have been logical to separate the produce into ‘conform’ and ‘non-conform’ and to trade them separately.  But no.  Any non-conformist produce was to be dumped.  This was bureaucracy gone insane.  At a time when millions were starving, Europe was dumping untold tons of food because it didn’t look nice.

Another strange aspect of this was that they showed no concern for taste at all.  Food looked good – nice and straight and evenly shaped, but it tasted like cardboard.  Obviously we eat with our eyes.

There was talk at one stage of growing cubed tomatoes, because they would be more efficient to pack, and could be sliced without the knife slipping.  That idea was dropped though.

…

Someone has finally seen the light.

Millions are still starving [but who gives a shit about them?], but now we are being affected by soaring food costs.  We can’t starve.

They are going to allow kinky stuff back on the shelves.

We are back to the good old days of weird shaped parsnips and knobbly potatoes.

Herself will be pleased.

carrot

Health food makes you thick

August 15th, 2008

Healthy food is very bad for your health.  Fact.

The other day, Herself was having a bowl of some healthy cereal, full of nuts and raisins and other crap.  She started coughing and spluttering, and the next thing I knew, she spat a tooth half way across the room.  It bounced off Sandy’s head and lay grinning at us from the corner.  “Thit,” she said.

We went to the dentist yesterday.

I sat in the car with Sandy, because I refuse to enter those places.  Sandy is of the same opinion [and her teeth are fine].

Herself came out eventually, looking rather grim, to say that we had to go to the Thity [I think she meant 'City'] to get a new partial denture.  So we set sail and for the first time in her life, she sat there quietly beside me clutching a bag containing moulds of her mouth.

We dropped off the moulds, and on the way home, I suggested we stop for a coffee in the village.  She said that was fine as long as she didn’t have to thpeak to anybody.  That was all right in my book, as I like my coffee and pipe-full to be peaceful.

It was a lovely day yesterday, and there were quite a few people sitting outside the coffee shop.  I grabbed my usual table and ordered.  Almost immediately, a couple of tourists who were sitting beside Herself started chatting to her about the dog.  She refused to talk to them and just made noises, so I explained to them that she was on a day out from the Maximum Security Home for the Bewildered.  They left in a hurry, which gave us more space.

Eventually we got home, and who should we meet, but our new next door neighbour.  He came in to introduce himself, and Herself had no option but to talk to him.  I had to patiently explain that her name wasn’t Herthelf and the dog wasn’t called Thandy.  I think he left with the impression that we are a little bit thtrange.

We have to go back today to collect the new denture.

teeth

The the moral of the thtory ith that if you want to keep your teeth, thteer well clear of health food.

Irish Government silences bloggers

August 14th, 2008

I stepped out my front door yesterday, and promptly fell over a pile of new telephone directories that someone had left there.

Naturally I set the system in motion to sue Eircom for damages.  My solicitor reckons it should be worth a couple of thousand.

Then I brought the directories in.

For some reason, there is a strange compulsion to read phone directories.  I don’t know why.  As someone once said – they are rather thin on plot, and there’s too many characters.

I looked up my own name to make sure that I’m listed.  I’m not.  This didn’t bother me that much, as the only people I want to hear from know my number anyway.

I decided to look up a few more names.  That is when a pattern began to emerge.

There are very few bloggers listed in the phone book.

I looked up Major, Twenty.  There were three or four Majors, but no Twenty.

I looked up Something, Flirty.  Nada.

I looked up Cane, Maxi.  Nothing.

Otter, Crabbling?  Not a sign.

No sign of The GR8, K8.

Mum, English doesn’t exist.

I was beginning to smell a very putrid rat at this stage.

I started to look up Robber, Bock the, but I remembered that they don’t have phones down there [or much else for that matter apart from guns and knives].

The more I looked, the less there was.

Everyone else was there.  Even a few people who don’t have telephones.  But there wasn’t a blogger in sight.

Eircom is supposed to be a private company but we all know they are under the government’s thumb.  Something on this scale could only have come from the top.

I don’t know what they are playing at, but it is big.

This is not a conspiracy theory.

This is a conspiracy fact.

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