Head Rambles

Grandad August 21st, 2009

Whenever I feel like a good dose of depression, I watch the news on RTE.

After I have feasted of the murder of the day and watched the weather forecast, I sometimes leave the television on.

RTE have this series that they have been running for ages called ‘Reeling in the Years’.

‘Reeling in the Years’ is cheap television at its best.  All they have to do is pick on some unfortunate bastard and send him down to the basement to dust off the cans of archive material.  The contents are then stuck together with sticky tape and banged out to an unsuspecting audience.

Normally they broadcast stuff from the eighties and nineties which bores the arse off me.  For fuck’s sake, the eighties and nineties aren’t history?  They are only yesterday and I can remember only too well what happened.

For the last few night they have been broadcasting material from the late sixties and early seventies which is much more like it.

One thing that strikes me every time I see material from those days is the number of protests.

No matter what year, we see massive protests in O’Connell Street or in front of the Dáil complaining vociferously about low pay, high taxes or whatever took their fancy at the time.  In the majority of those cases, the protesters won and everyone went home until the next riot.

Where the hell are the protests now?

God knows, we have more than enough to protest about.  If anything we are spoiled for choice.  We have the most corrupt, inept, incompetent bastards in office who have destroyed everything that we gained over the last fifty years and reduced the country to begging paupers.  Ireland is not going down the toilet.  It has sunk, and is now floating along with the rest of the shit off Howth Head.

When I was a student in the sixties, there would have been riots in the streets.  The entire country would have gone out on strike, and we would have settled for nothing less than a complete rout of the government.

What the hell has happened?  Where are the students?  Where are the unions?  Why isn’t there blood running in the gutters?

I am baffled by the meek acceptance of our plight.  I am ashamed at the utter spinelessness of our youth.  My generation stopped the war in Viet Nam through protests.  We brought down governments.  We changed things for the better.

The youth of today protest all right.  They Twitter their anger.  They complain on Bebo.  They protest on Facebook.

Fuck that.

Is this what the world has sunk to?

• Rants , Times past
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Grandad August 20th, 2009

I just received an email.

I get quite a lot of emails, but seeing as my todger is quite long enough and since I discovered that Tanya from the Ukraine is an fact a trucker called Boris from Vladivostok, I don’t read most of them.

This one appealed to me though.

Apparently they [whoever ‘they’ are] are finally recognising that there is a group of us that is not obsessed with iPods and iPhones and the latest ‘celebrity’ scandal.  I refer of course to the “Silver Surfer”.

Now, I’m not sure precisely what constitutes a Silver Surfer.  I replied to the mail asking for clarification.

This is what I wrote -

Dear Pauline

Just out of interest [this is something that has been bugging me for a while] – what constitutes a Silver Surfer?
The subject has cropped up a few times in the past as to what constitutes a ‘senior’ or ‘silver’ in the Internet world.  Is there an entry age?  If I don’t qualify as a ‘Silver’ my image may take a severe battering [if the word gets out].  My beard is pure white and there are quite a few silver streaks in my hair if that is any help?

Grandad

She had written to me to tell me that this September, they are holding the “Irish Silver Surfer Web Awards 2009”.  Great stuff!

The full gist of the mail is as follows:

Age Action Ireland is hosting a conference Imagine IT- A Celebration of Older People & Information Technology (IT) in Croke Park on Monday Sept 28^th from 10am to 4pm, the event will include the Irish Silver Surfer Awards 2009.

Your readers may be interested in nominating an older person they know who is an enthusiastic IT user? The awards will be for;

• Silver Surfer of the Year – will be awarded to an older person who embraces IT for learning, leisure, pleasure of enterprise

• IT volunteer(s) of the Year – will be awarded to an individual or groups of volunteers who prove support or encouragement to older IT learners

• Most Dedicated IT Learner – will be awarded to an older person who have overcome challenges to become IT confident

• Group Communicator – will be awarded to an older person who has used IT to communication with family, community or club

• Passionate Hobbyist - will be awarded to an older person who uses IT to assist them in their hobby

Generous prizes of laptops and IT equipment. Closing date for nominations is 18^th September.

This is a fun event with an emphasis on challenging stereotypes about older people and IT. The conference has 3 sessions:

Try IT! – An interactive IT expo with demos of new products and IT applications

Celebrate IT! – National IT Awards

Promote IT! – Speakers from some of the best IT programmes for older people in Ireland and UK

Conference Cost €20 including lunch and refreshments.

Attached is some further information about conference and awards and also a nomination form.

For bookings or queries please contact myself Pauline Power email: ppower@ageaction.ie or Phone: 01 475 6989

Now this looks like my kind of fun.  No loud music.  No irritating young people.  Just the soft click of Zimmer Frames and the occasional squeak of a wheelchair while us oldies get to know each other.  I hope they have security guards to keep anyone out who is still in their first half century?

She attached a couple of posters too and an entry form.

There is Poster 1 and Poster 2 and [very important] a Nomination Form

So get in there.  Nominate someone you know.  If you have grand kids, leave ‘em behind and have some fun in Croke Park.

I’m still not sure if I qualify though.

She still hasn’t answered my mail.

-oOo-

Update.

She has answered my mail.

Anyone over 55?

Bloody hell!!

They’re letting kids in now.

• Uncategorized
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Grandad August 19th, 2009

I am not inordinately fond of bankers at the moment.

Quite frankly, if the species became extinct I doubt that I would turn a hair.

However, I find myself, for once on the side of a banker who wants to change jobs.

Former Bank of Ireland chairman Richard Burrows is to accept the chairmanship of British American Tobacco.

What brought this to my attention was a piece in the Irish Times – Ash Ireland criticises Burrows move.

Who the fuck do ASH think they are?  Do they honestly think they have the right to comment on who works where?

As a group, ASH are nothing short of a crowd of bigots who epitomise the very worst of the Nanny State.  They have their self imposed charter to save us all from ourselves.  To them, smokers are the epitome of evil itself and it is their mission in life to eradicate smoking by any means.  Because of this self appointed charter, they now feel they have a right to comment on where we work?

Dr Angie Brown is the Himmler of the ASH Reich.

“Mr Burrows will be well aware that millions of people die from the effects of smoking around the world each year and many of these cigarettes are developed and manufactured by BAT,” she said.

That is very true, as facts go.  Would Brown have the same reservations if he were to announce that he was to work for the alcohol industry?  How about the automotive industry?  Power?  I very much doubt it, yet all of those have their associated fatalities.  She, and her cronies in ASH are of the opinion that tobacco is the only evil in this world.

She goes on to say

“This is an industry which aggressively markets an addictive killer product – and still endeavours to maintain that passive smoke is harmless – despite it being graded as a class one carcinogen by the WHO [World Health Organisation]”.

Here we are into typical ASH territory of lies and deceit.

“An addictive killer product” – How emotive can one get.  It implies that tobacco is up there with arsenic, crack cocaine.

It is the next line that is classic ASH material.  She is asserting that something is true by implication.  The WHO have never classified passive smoking as a class one carcinogen to my knowledge.

Here is a little snippet of information for ASH* -

The World Health Organisation commissioned International Agency for Research on Cancer to do a study on the effects of passive smoking.

By March 1998 the study had been completed and written up but remained unreleased, creating speculation that the results did not support the WHO’s view of secondhand smoke as a genuine health hazard. This suspicion was heightened when the Sunday Telegraph found a summary of the results buried in an internal WHO report. On March 8 1998 the newspaper published an article revealed that the researchers had found no statistically significant elevation in risk for those exposed to secondhand smoke as adults and found a statistically significant reduction in risk for those exposed in childhood. Entitled “Passive smoking doesn’t cause cancer – official”, the article not only reported the lack of association but, referring to the data on childhood exposure, reported that passive smoking “might even have a protective effect”.

ASH, for decades have relied on lies and deceit to further their aims.

Now are they trying to dabble in the field of bullying tactics?

I don’t mind people having opinions, but when when they start using tactics straight from the pages of the Third Reich then my blood starts to boil.

I would suggest to Ms Brown that she should chill out [to use a modern idiom], have a pint and a nice relaxing cigarette.

* Extract from “Velvet Glove, Iron Fist” A history of Ant-Smoking by Christopher Snowdon

• Smoking
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Grandad August 18th, 2009

I suppose you are all wondering whatever happened to Sandy’s electric fence?

As you know, I bought it a couple of months ago and brought it home to examine.

The first thing I realised was that I didn’t have enough wire.  There is a little transmitter that is mounted in the house, and connections on it for two wires.  The idea is that you feed a single strand out of one connection and run it around the perimeter of your acreage and then back into the second connection.

I had one hell of a job finding the right wire to complete the loop, but as you know, I found it eventually.

I connected the new wire to the old and carried on around the perimeter until I came back to the transmitter.  I connected the wire.  I switched on.  Nothing happened.  Eventually I traced the fault back to the connection I had made between the two wires, and that of course was in the middle of a bramble bush.  Many scratches and much blood later, I got the little light on the transmitter to glow.  Great!  Now to try it out.

There is a little tester that can be connected to the dog collar to see if it’s working.

It wasn’t.

The only thing I could think of was that the battery in the collar was dead, so I removed it and started on another marathon hunt.  It transpired that the battery is a very unusual size and no one stocked it.

Fuck!

After trying countless supermarkets, hardware shops, chemists and others I eventually found a solution.  Instead of using the battery I was supposed to use, I made one up out of a little stack of those fiddly little silver pellet batteries.  I found a size, that if I stuck four of them on top of each other, I would have the right voltage and a perfect fit.  I stuck them together with sticky tape and put them in the collar.  It worked perfectly!

Now the next problem I had was the small matter of training.

When I got the box originally, there was a DVD in it with full training instructions.  Of course it was American, and in true American fashion, they assumed that we all have “yards” with no fences.  why the fuck do they call them “yards”?  Yards are for rubbish and storing timber and the like.  Anyway the bloke in the video had planted the wire around the perimeter of his “yard” and proceeded to teach the dog that any time it approached the perimeter that it was time to turn back.  My problem was that my perimeter was all brambles, nettles, bushes and undergrowth and there was no point in trying to teach Sandy that she wasn’t to stroll through that lot, as she wouldn’t try anyway.  She’s not fucking stupid.  I could have tried training her that she wasn’t to approach the area where she usually got out, but she knew that was verboten too.

In the end I just said fuckit and stuck the collar on her and let her loose.

She was out in the garden for about three minutes before I heard the first scream.  It worked!!!  Ten minutes later, I heard the second yelp from a different direction and a little puff of blue smoke arose from behind a rose bush.  This was good stuff.

Since then she is very wary about approaching any of the boundary.  She hasn’t been out on the road since.

I did have a couple of small problems.  To complete my wire loop, I had to run it around the outside of the house, and in a couple of places the signal reaches indoors.  This means that Sandy’s collar beeps at her and give a warning even when she is inside the house.

We have had a very happy couple of weeks.

Sandy is free to wander the estate without being watched.  She loves the freedom.  Every now and then she comes across another loop of the wire and comes in somewhat chastened and smelling of singed dog-hair.

Pity about her food though.

Her feeding dish happens to be in one of the signal areas.

I keep meaning to move it, but I keep forgetting.

All in all, I would call the dog fence a yelping roaring success.

• Around the garden
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Grandad August 17th, 2009

I have to go back to Skobieville [our local town] on Saturday.

I had to get new lenses fitted to the old spectacles.  It was a second attempt as the first lot of lenses were guntered and fair play to the girl in the shop – she refused to fit them, and sent them back to the lens makers.  Either that, or she fancied me [no surprise there] as she asked for my phone number the first time I was there and has been phoning me at intervals on the pretext of giving progress reports.

Skobieville is a town that has become dedicated to Skobies.  You won’t find much there if you want to do a normal days shopping.  I have noticed that over the years, the decent shops have all closed and now all you will find are pubs, betting shops and takeaways.  There are about fifteen Chinese Takeaways per head of the population, and betting shops alternate with pubs all the way down the main street.

On Saturday, I noticed a new phenomenon – the tattoo parlour.

Our wonderful government are constantly harping on about the Mary Harney Pig Flu Pandemic but I think they have missed the real threat.  There is a pandemic of tattoo parlours in Skobieville.  I don’t know where they all came from but they are everywhere.  Just out of interest, I did a Google for tattoo parlours in Skobieville and came up with over 100,000 results, which shows it’s not just in my mind.

I could never understand tattoos.  I can understand how someone might dye their hair or even shave it off to appear fashionable but hair dye grows out, and shaved heads just grow so the damage is temporary.  Tattoos on the other hand are for life.  I mean to say, wouldn’t I look a right Wally now if I had some tattoo etched across my back extolling the virtues of some long forgotten 60s rock group? 

I have to be careful now as my daughter went and got herself tattooed.  I suppose in years to come when she is hitting her sixties she can always get them removed?

This is the thing about tattoos though – they are permanent.  It may only take a good drunken night and short while in a parlour to get one, but to remove it requires laser surgery.  That is not only very expensive, but [I hope] a lot more painful than the original tattoo.  Even then you are likely to be scarred for life.  And if I had had “Big John” tattooed on my todger and then wanted it removed, I don’t think I’d want a laser gun being aimed Down There, if you get my drift?

Of course, Skobies get tattooed for no apparent reason at all, and that probably explains the pandemic.  A tattoo is as mandatory to a Skobie as a mobile phone a can of lager and five illegitimate kids, to go with the ultra tight skirt and the plunging neckline. Other people however get tattoos because they are fashionable, because their friends have them of [God help us] because some pea brained “celebrity” has them.  However, fashions change,  friends change and with a bit of luck “celebrities” end up on the compost heap or a drug clinic, so what happens to the tattoo then?

Someone help me out here.  Someone please explain why people permanently mutilate themselves?

Is it because they want to remember how to spell?

• Around the town
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