Head Rambles

Grandad April 14th, 2010

I did another of my little guest spots on radio this morning.

Actually I did it yesterday, because I thought I would be asleep this morning, but I wasn’t and that’s a different story.

Yesterday was one of those days when a whole load of unexpected things happened along with all the things I expected to happen.  I suppose that’s what makes life interesting?  It’s the little surprises that add spice to life, as the captain of the Titanic was heard to remark.

Anyway, I was chatting away to Shane when a friend, whom I hadn’t seen in ages came hacking his way through the long grass of the lawn.  I had to somehow signal to him that I was on the phone and not to make any noise.  I don’t know what the sign language for “I’m doing a radio interview, so shut the fuck up” is but it seemed to have the desired effect.  Apparently Sandy doesn’t understand sign language though [apart from the meaning of a rolled up newspaper] and she proceeded to bark at my friend, and as a result, she has made her radio debut.

Shane wanted to talk about Jamie Oliver which was a bit awkward as I had already said all I had to say here.  I suppose there may have been one or two listeners who actually haven’t read this site, so I ran with it anyway.

For various technical reasons [i.e. I was asleep], I hadn’t heard the station before, only my contribution, but this morning was different.  I thought they announced the station as C103, and then realised to my horror that they were actually saying Zee 103!  It’s bad enough that American insist on eviscerating the language with their todally awesome misuse of words and their complete inability to spell, but when they can’t even pronounce the letters of the alphabet, it really fucks up my head.  How many times to I have to say that ‘Z’ is pronounced ‘zed’, not fucking ‘zee’?  I have a good mind to sue the radio station for mental trauma and illegal importation of corrupt pronunciation.

So here is my little contribution to ZED 103 this morning.

I hope you were listening, Cully?

And please give a warm welcome to Sandy who can be heard surgically removing my friend’s balls in the background.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

• Podcasting
• Comments(9)

Grandad April 13th, 2010

This country is in a mess.

While the rest of the world is slowly but surely recovering, we are still in recession, with no sign of it bottoming out yet.  We keep hearing that the worst is nearly over, but we have been hearing that for so long now that no one believes it.

And there is the crux of the matter.

No one believes anything the government has to say any more.  Not one fucking word.  They have been lying constantly and consistently for the last few years to the extent that people now believe the opposite of what they say.

There is no quick solution to Ireland’s problems, but there are a couple of things we could do to make life one hell of a lot better.

First and foremost, the government must go.  I don’t care how, and would be very happy to see violent means involved.  They are a millstone around our necks, and their very existence is depressing us and preventing recovery.  I don’t give a shit who replaces them, as a farmyard of animals would do a better job anyway.  What’s more, when they go, they should be stripped of all pensions and when they reach retirement age, they can have the state pension like the rest of us.  Why the fuck should they be paid anything is beyond me, as they caused the mess, but I’m feeling irrationally generous because the sun is shining.

As for the bankers…  The bastards whose greed bankrupted the country deserve one simple punishment.  They should be stripped of every penny they have.  Every last fucking red cent.  Let them walk the streets and beg in the gutters.  And I don’t give a fuck about their wives and children either – they benefitted for long enough off daddy’s ill gotten gains.

This country is seething with anger and resentment.

We are angry that the government are bailing out banks that should have gone to the wall.  We are angry because the government is doing more to appease “foreign investors” and Brussels than they are to solving the domestic crisis.  We are angry because the government don’t give a shit if every last one of us is homeless, unemployed and on the breadline provided Brussels approves of the way we are doing things.  Foreign opinion is more important than the people.

We are resentful because the government, the bankers and the builders who dumped us into the shit house are all still there.  There isn’t one who has paid any kind of penalty.  There isn’t one who has been convicted of anything.  There isn’t one who has even been fired.  Any who have left their jobs have resigned or retired with huge pensions and massive golden handshakes.

I don’t give a flying fuck about the legality of lynching the government or the bankers.  That shower are hiding behind a crap, outdated and heavily biased legal system that should be scrapped anyway. 

Fuck it.

Let’s just lynch the bastards.

• Politics
• Comments(11)

Grandad April 12th, 2010

I had to go up to Dublin earlier today.

I fucking hate Dublin, but sometimes these things have to be done.

Seeing as we parked within an ass’s roar of the shops, I knew Herself would vanish, which she did.  It’s like some programming glitch that she has a compulsion to head off shopping even though she doesn’t need anything.  Being wise to the ways of the world, and knowing she was going to be ages buying next to nothing, I found myself a quiet coffee shop with a little sunny terrace out the back.

It was nice there.  I sat in the sunshine, puffing the pipe and supping quite nice coffee and generally contemplating the meaning of life.

Two women came out to the terrace with their sprogs.  One woman was enormously fat and she had a revolting slug of a five year old with her.  The other woman had a wee black girl of around the same age.

I admit I am prejudiced.  I fucking hate fat kids.

I don’t mind kids who are a little overweight, but Little Slug was fucking obese.  He had that red blotchy type of round face that is just crying out for a good decent elbowing.  His mother was in the same league as her son, and her trousers kept slipping to half mast as she didn’t have a waist to support them.  Luckily they never fell the full distance, as I doubt the stomach could have taken that.

In the space of about half an hour, I watched Little Slug work his way through a plate of sausages, a tub of ice cream and two tubs of sweetened creamed rice.  He also had half a mug of coffee and one of those large pots of cola.  When he wasn’t eating [which wasn’t often] he was yelling.  I don’t know what he was yelling for or about; he was just yelling for the sake of it.  His ma kept telling him to shut up but he just ignored her and either yelled again or demanded more food.

I passed the time quietly making mental selections of the various torture devices I would like to use on Little Slug.  I eventually settled on a nice image of myself beating the crap out of him with a baseball bat.

That kid was so full of sugar, caffeine and additives that it was no wonder he was hyperactive and obnoxious.  By the looks of him, I would say he is like that all the time.

I can guarantee that he has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

ADHD my hole.

Just starve the little fucker.

• Around the town
• Comments(18)

Grandad April 11th, 2010

I just cannot understand the popularity of cookery programmes on television.

Cooking is about taste.  It is about smell.  So watching a cookery programme is like watching snooker on a black and white set, or listening to a mime artist on radio – utterly pointless.

For some reason, cookery presenters all seem to be complete wankers.  Maybe it is one of the qualifications of being a cook, I don’t know, but they all irritate me intensely.

It was a toss up as to whether I would go for Gordon Ramsey or Jamie Oliver.  I let them simmer for five minutes and this is what popped out of the pot.

Jamie shredding his fingers.

There are so many things about this little fuckwad that get under my skin.  It’s his “amn’t I just an ordinary chappie, and doesn’t everyone love me” attitude.  It’s the way he can’t put something in a pan without dropping it from the fucking ceiling.  It’s the way he never shuts the fuck up.

I never watch cookery programmes because I just don’t see the point, but this little shit inveigled his way into the system so he appears in advertisements and is difficult to miss.

The bottom line anyway is that he is utterly pointless.  If you can heat a tin of baked beans, then you don’t need a Jamie Oliver in your life. Even if you can’t heat a tin of baked beans, he isn’t going to do it for you.  His total contribution to the development of mankind is a whacking great zero.  He is a waste of space.  He is using valuable oxygen.  He is pointless.

My only problem now is that I can’t decide when to give him his kicking.

Do I do it before or after the lobster treatment?

Drop from the ceiling into a cold pan of water and then bring slowly to the boil.

The Faces collection.

• Faces
• Comments(17)

Grandad April 9th, 2010

I wasn’t going to write anything today.

Why?

Because it’s quite a nice day outside and the grass needs cutting.  I haven’t had the mower out since August last.

And apart from that, I just got a bit pissed off with writing.  “Give it a rest” I says to myself [I don’t often talk to myself, but I am a good listener, and don’t argue much]. 

Before cutting the lawns, I decided to update my SatNav, because it has been complaining that its maps are out of date.

I connected Roger to my laptop and went into the site.  It hummed and hawed a bit and eventually told me everything that I had already installed, and announced that I had downloaded the 2010 maps, but that they hadn’t installed correctly.  It told me to find the file I had downloaded, and to install it manually.  The fuckers didn’t tell me how to do this though.  “Double click on the file” says they.  I did, and the fucking PC just told me it didn’t know what to do with it.

I went back to the website, and they said that I always had the option of downloading it again.  I searched everywhere, but there is no place for me to download it from.  Fucking arseholes.

I searched the Interweb, and one or two people had the same problem.  They were told to unzip the file, and it would then install.  I tried that but that didn’t work either – it just said that it wasn’t a zipped file.  At this stage, I was on my third Prozac, and getting a little steamed up.  I decided to write to the company.

I had one hell of a job finding some way of emailing them.  Everywhere I went, they just kept offering me inane solutions to problems I didn’t have.  Eventually I cracked it and found a submission form.

They wanted loads of information, such as the model number [I knew that] and the serial number [I found that].  They also wanted to know the software version, but didn’t tell me how to find that.  Wankers.  I eventually found it by somewhat devious means that involves cracking into the maintenance section of the SatNav.  I filled out the rest of the rest of the information and typed a nice succinct message telling them my problem.  Before I sent it, I went for a piss.  When I came back, the fucking screen had somehow refreshed and I had to start all over again.  Bollox.

I eventually sent off the message, so I am now awaiting their reply.  I know it will be useless, even if I get a reply at all.

I need my SatNav, because if I have to go into Dublin at all [God forbid] then I get hopelessly lost.  I used to know the city like the back of my hand, but they have fucked around with it so much, with their new roads, and motorways and shit like that that I get lost even in the areas I knew particularly well.

So even though I wasn’t going to write today, it just somehow happened.  Something irritates me and the shit pours onto the keyboard.

I feel better now.

The fucking grass can wait ‘til tomorrow.

• On the road
• Comments(10)