Head Rambles

Grandad January 11th, 2009

I wasn’t going to write anything today, as nothing has really happened. 

Until now.

The house has filled up with foreigners again.

I am banished to the back room, so I might as well be messing around on the Interweb as twiddling my thumbs.

Once again, this crowd arrived without any warning.  I don’t know where Herself gets them from, or even more important, what she is using them for.

They arrive.  They mill around making a lot of noise, and then they vanish again as suddenly as they came.

I find it unnerving, and so does Sandy.

I though all the foreigners has done the sensible thing and gone home?  God knows, no one in their right mind would want to stay in this boghole of a country unless they had nowhere else to go.

I have applied for a permanent residency in Greenland.  I believe it’s warmer there and they are heading towards independence so there is a fair chance I could be elected.  Also the population is around 60,000 so there is a damned good chance of winning the lottery.

They don’t have many tourists, so I may have to develop a new hobby.  I’ll have to arrange for a regular supply of Guinness too.

I might even get myself one of the local 4WDs?

• Around the house
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Grandad January 10th, 2009

The Other Fella has been blogging for a few weeks now.

I haven’t mentioned it much before, as I hoped he’d grow bored of it and go away.

It is one of the worst blogs I have seen in ages.

He even had the neck to call it The Other Fellow.  How fucking mimsyish is that?

Most of the time he writes about me, which is very sad.  He obviously has no life of his own.  And when he isn’t blogging about me he is off on some wimpish train of thought that is as boring as hell.  His last post was a pathetic whimper about trees in the garden, for fuck’s sake!

I swear the only reason he gets any visitors is because he has picked up a rather neat design.  His site looks nice, I’ll grant him that.

I have been thinking about the design of this one for a long time now, but I just can’t seem to find something suitable.  I’d like one as neat as his, so I found where he got it and had a look at some of the other designs there.  They are nice.

There is this one -

Or this one -

They both look nice but they aren’t really suitable.  They both would need a lot of tweaking, and I’d have to ask him to do it.  There is no way that I’m going to give him the satisfaction.

Help me out here.  I need suggestions.  Does anyone know anything about themes or how to write them or anything?

And in the meantime, steer well clear of The Other Fella.

A blog that bad shouldn’t be encouraged.

• Blogging
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Grandad January 9th, 2009

I have a dream.

Barrack Obama is sitting in the White House, having just taken over the presidency.

He has a mountain of problems on his desk.  He has the financial crisis to solve, the mess in the Middle East and how to eliminate Condoleezza Rice because she won’t hand over the keys to the executive washroom.  He solves all these in the first morning when the next thing, an insurmountable problem arrives on his desk.

An invitation to visit his ancestor’s supposed birthplace in Ireland.

He knows well that the Irish will manage to drag up some kind of ancestral link to absolutely anybody, and he feels sorry for them.

How the hell is he going to get out of a visit to some arsehole in the bogs of Ireland?

The stress begins to tell.

He whips out a cigarette.  But then he remembers that the White House in a non-smoking area.

“Fuck this,” Obama says to himself, “I am the Goddamn president now, and I can do what I like.”

So he lights up.

The White House staff are a bit annoyed at this political incorrectness, but they can’t give out to The Boss, so in a monumental piece of arse-licking, they declare the White House to be a smoking zone.

Word soon spreads throughout Washington that it is now politically incorrect to be a non smoker, and signs start appearing everywhere – “Smokers Only”.

America is now in a quandary.  They have declared smoking and passive smoking to be lethal, yet they have to be politically correct.  They send their scientists and researchers back to the drawing board.

Reams of research that has been stashed away in vaults around the country is dusted off and they suddenly discover all the stuff that has been buried.

There are the figures that give the health benefits of smoking.  There is the research that shows no discernable deleterious effects of passive smoking.  There is even a paper that shows that pipe smokers increase their life expectancy.

Throughout America, all the anti-smoking laws, rules and regulations are rescinded.  In some states, it becomes compulsory to smoke from the age of five.

Of course this rash of fervour soon spreads throughout the world and we can all get back to normal again.

All we need is for the people of Moneygall in Offaly to send that invitation.

I wish they’d hurry up.

• America , Smoking
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Grandad January 8th, 2009

Last March I was very honoured to win an award at the Irish Blog Awards.

Part of the prize was a nice bottle of champagne.

Being a Guinness man, and not particularly partial to Black Velvet, the bottle has remained unopened, waiting for a Very Special Occasion.

I’m fussy about special occasions.  Some would have opened the bottle at Christmas when the family were all here.  No.  We opened a couple of bottles we brought back from France and got pissed on enjoyed them.

I had my special occasion in mind and the bottle remained firmly sealed until then.

That occasion has now arrived.

It came through the letterbox this morning.

The very first copy.

The first of a first edition.  Already I can see it appreciating in value.

The distribution process starts on Monday to it should appear on the shelves soon.

But until then……..

Sláinte.

• The Book
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Grandad January 7th, 2009

I see the Young Scientists has opened its doors for another year.

Believe it or not, I was an entrant once.  Only once.  Never again.

In those days it was the Aer Lingus Young Scientists Exhibition, and it was held in the Rotunda Room of the Mansion House.

I can’t remember what year it was.  It was either the very first one in ‘64 or it may have been the following year.  How things have changed.

I see young Tommy has made another bid for stardom, and has an entry in.

What struck me was his comment that he had to get his presentation back from the printers!  What?  Printers?  In my day, we scribbled our notes in copybooks, tore out the pages and thumbtacked them onto the cubicle.  Next thing, entrants will be hiring PR experts, decorators and makeup artists?

In my day, we muddled through.  There was a sense of adventure and a pioneering spirit.  Not for us the glamour of a flashy computer display.  Not for us the concept of a video presentation.  We threw things together and hoped they worked when the judges came around.  Meccano, string and sticky tape were the order of the day.

I had a damned good entry.

“An exploration of the theory that there is more than one way to skin a cat [with live demonstrations]”

It didn’t win, but I got a certificate and a court summons.

I showed a lot of promise even in those days.

• Times past
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