Head Rambles

Grandad November 26th, 2009

Our Minnie has been driving me mad lately.

Since Fizz arrived on the scene, she has gone from a contented quiet little guinea pig into a rampant over sexed little scrubber.

I tried letting them loose together, but that just resulted in Minnie offering herself to Fizz with loud whirring noises, and when that didn’t work she did her best to shag Fizz’s brains out.  I had to separate them again.

They each have a cage now, and the cages are close enough for them to happily converse, but not close enough for Minnie to get steamed up.  That, you would imagine, is the ideal set-up.

But no.  Minnie decided that she wanted to get closer and the only way to do that was to exit her cage.  To her chagrin however, she discovered that there were metal bars in the way.  She decided to eat her way through them.

I like guinea pigs.  As pets or for dinner, it’s all the same to me.  However, I have discovered that their intelligence quotient is somewhere down around the level of Mary Coughlan or Sarah Palin.  Minnie will just not learn that eating metal bars is a futile exercise.

For the last couple of weeks, Minnie has been twanging the bars on her cage and it is really irritating.  It is incessant and loud.  I tried thwapping her on the nose with some paper every time she did it, but she just looked surprised for a moment before deciding to resume.  I thereby learned another lesson – guinea pigs are not easy to train.

I did contemplate electrifying the bars on the cage, and initial experiments were quite successful.  However, I think Minnie quite enjoyed the pretty sparks and the smell of burning fur and she soon resumed her twanging.

I finally found the solution today.

Since this morning, life here has been blissfully quiet.  Minnie is happy, and so am I.

What did I do?

I smeared the bars of her cage with Marmite.

Guinea pigs apparently don’t like Marmite.

• Around the house
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Grandad November 25th, 2009

We are coming up to that time of year again.

It is time for the annual consumer-fest that is the Late Late Toy Show.

For those of you who are fortunate enough to live in far off lands, The Late Late Toy Show is an annual institution here, where the latest toys, gadgets and gizmos are put on display on television.  For two hours, we are treated to an embarrassing display of consumerism at its worst.

I did some babysitting the other day.  I call it babysitting, but Puppychild is five now so she is hardly a baby, but you know what I mean.  As a result, the television was put on at her insistence.  I don’t approve of plonking kids in front of televisions, but Puppychild always ignores it anyway.  Maybe she wanted it on to entertain me?  Anyhow, there I was with the television on, so I couldn’t help but witness some of the advertisements that are pumped at the kids of today.

One thing that struck me about the toys on offer, and that is their uniformity.

They are all around €50.

They all require batteries.

Most require remote controls.

They all have a mechanical lifespan of about a month and an attention lifespan of a day.

They all required the intelligence of a gnat to operate.

In other words, the kids are going to end up getting more pleasure out of the packaging than they are out of the toy.

The advertisements are all slanted in a particular way too.  They are not so much aimed at the children as aimed at generating a group frenzy, so that peer pressure comes into play and God help the parents when that happens.

I have never seen so much unadulterated overpriced crap in all my years.

So the Late Late Crap Show is going to consist of two hours of overpriced, overhyped, worthless, ephemeral rubbish.  Jedward are on too, which kind of proves my point?

And what was Puppychild doing while all this was on?

She was very happily playing on the floor with my collection of Dinky cars, that are nearly sixty years old. She had ascribed a different personality to each car and was having a whale of a time, and her imagination was running at full throttle.  There wasn’t a silicon chip, a battery or a remote control to be seen.

When she eventually tired of her game on the floor, she tidied up and did some jig-saws.

I rest my case, M’Lud.

• Television , Times past
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Grandad November 24th, 2009

I am more than a little surprised that the Prophets of Doom haven’t been out trying to scare the shite out of us lately.

Ireland and Cumbria in the UK have been suffering the worst floods on record, to the extent that Ireland’s second city – Cork – now bears a close resemblance to Venice.

Photo: Miriam Hurley 

I would have thought that this was the ultimate opportunity for the Climate Change Alarmists to scream ‘we told you so’ from the rooftops.  They have been remarkably quiet.  There was one bloke interviewed on the news who muttered that the only solution to the flooding was to save the planet, but everyone politely ignored him.  Maybe they know about the CRU?

There is a section of East Anglia University known as the Climatic Research Unit.  It is described as “one of the world’s leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.”  In other words, this is one of the worlds great authorities who are convincing us that it is our actions that are influencing the climate.

Some of you may not be aware of this, but a sizeable chunk of files from the CRU have been placed in the public domain, whether deliberately or by hackers is not know.  That is irrelevant as the CRU are not denying that the files are genuine.

While the majority of the files are somewhat tedious [there are some 60Mb of emails and code] there are some that are, quite frankly, alarming.

There are mails in there talking about destroying data before Freedom of Information requests are made.  There are mails talking about the use of ‘tricks’ to falsify data.  There are notes from programmers saying that the data is confused and mixed up, and that they [apparently] are taking data at random from files.  There are mails discussing ways to discredit scientists with opposing views. All in all, it makes for some pretty frightening reading.

Quite a few people have been analysing the CRU data, and the site I have been following is ‘The Devil’s Kitchen’ who has done a huge amount of work on the subject.

I am not saying that the ‘leaked’ data completely discredits the work of the CRU.  What I am saying is that it puts an enormous question mark over their findings, and therefore on the whole ‘man is causing global warming’ argument.

I am also not one who generally goes in for conspiracy theories.  However, here we have a conspiracy that makes sense.

We have reached the point where Global Warming has to be man made.  It is not only an industry that is potentially worth trillions of dollars [not billions – trillions] but it is the ultimate weapon to prevent China, India and Africa from threatening the western domination of the world.  By the time that Global Warming is proved to be a natural event, it will be too late to stop the eco-industries, and the developing countries will have been kept firmly in their place – at the bottom of the heap.

It makes sense.

• Global Warming
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Grandad November 23rd, 2009

I was pondering the meaning of life and clipping my toenails this morning when I came across a brainfart on ‘A view from Kerry’.

It got me thinking.

Now it may not be a good idea to get me thinking, but once the deed is done, it is done.

When I started writing this rubbish back in the dim distant past, I mused and I pondered, but I didn’t rant quite so much.  I was sparing with the expletives, and when I used them, I peppered them with asterisks, as I didn’t want to offend anyone. 

Using asterisks as a substitute for letters can be risky, as describing Cowen as a complete *unt could be misinterpreted as meaning he is a cunt rather than an aunt.  Anyway my offspring K8 rightly pointed out that it was somewhat hypocritical to use asterisks as everyone knew what I meant anyway [as presumably they know that Cowen isn’t my aunt?].

Over the years, it is true, my use of expletives has increased somewhat.  I has been said that such usage indicates a lack of vocabulary, and this indeed is the case.  I have run out of words.

I always knew that our esteemed government were a shower of corrupt incompetents, but over the last year or so they have excelled themselves to the point where I have literally run out of superlatives.  Even describing them as motherfucking wanking cunts doesn’t go a fraction of the way to describing my heartfelt feelings towards them.  My problem now is that I am running out of expletives.

Of course it isn’t just the government that I despair over.

I am saddened by the Irish as a whole, or indeed Ireland as a hole.

I am saddened that they persist in voting Fianna Fail back into power.  I am saddened by the ease with which they were fooled into voting for Lisbon.  Most of all, I am saddened that despite the appalling mess we are in, the only thing that gets the country talking is Thierry Henry or Jedward.

Talking of Jedward….

What a pair of embarrassing fucking wankers!

• Blogging , Rambles
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Grandad November 22nd, 2009

What the fuck is it with these morons and their Christmas trees?

OK, so it is traditional for a city to put up a tree at this time of year, and I have no problem with that.  But then they have to go all fancy and start sticking up monstrosities that bear fuck all resemblance to a tree apart from a vaguely conical shape.

Take for example the monstrosity that they erect in Dublin.

This carbuncle on the face of the city was manufactured in France at a cost of €100,000, and is supposed to be “eco friendly”.  Eco friendly my bollox.  They talk about it having “energy efficient lighting”.  God give me strength!  If they are so fucking worried about the consumption of electricity, then why is the whole fucking city floodlit every night of the year? 

Then there is the “sustainable” “tree” that they have in Limerick.

This yoke that looks like it has fallen off a church is supposed to be a tree?  Hah!  It least it has the sense to wreck itself before it could despoil the skyline.

Now, listen to the voice of reason, you politically correct, inept eejits.

Ireland is covered in fucking forests.  You have covered the mountains with millions of fucking trees so that instead of pleasant views, all we can see is endless lines of identical conifers.  What’s more, the buggers grow at a frightening rate of knots, so that knocks your “sustainability” crap on the head.  Cut one town today, and another one will have grown in its place by tomorrow.

All you have to do is take a half hour drive from any city in the country and your find yourselves surrounded by conifers.  Cut one down and stick it up in your city, if you must. 

They are quiet easy to recognise.

They look like this:

• Rants
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