Archive for February, 2011

And the winner is

February 6th, 2011

I see it’s time for the annual love-fest.

The Irish Blog Awards have come around again.

They are going all foreign this year and are going up to Belfast.  The Europa Hotel, no less.  The world’s most bombed hotel.  I hope hotel management learned from all that destruction because the awards mob are far more damaging than any bomb.  It’s no coincidence that the acronyms IBA and IRA are so similar.

I imagine it will be a fairly quiet affair this year though, as a shed-load of sites seem to have disappeared over the last twelve months.  I have 170 sites listed in my feed reader and it is scary when I check the inactive sites.  I keep telling myself to prune the dead sites out, but then I am afraid I will have very few left to read.

There are some really weird fucking categories this year.  “Best Outraged Blog Awards Post”?  What the fuck is that?  Maybe they mean “Best Outraged Blog Post Award”?  That doesn’t make much sense either.  Outraged at what?  God knows, there is enough to be outraged about so I can imagine there will be quite a few entries there.

I do wish they would change the name of the event though.  You know how I hate that word ‘blog’ and I refuse to call this site anything other than a site.  They should call it the Irish Awards For The Site That Is Not A Professional Website That Is Updated On A Regular Basis.  I would be more inclined to support the IAFTSTINAPWTIUOARB Awards as I would feel more at home there.

There would also be less chance of confusing them with the IRA

Dame Enda Average

February 5th, 2011

At last we are in the process of getting rid of the greatest arsehole of a leader.

Unfortunately it looks like we are getting another one.

Going by the opinion polls, the two biggest parties in the next Dail are going to be Fine Gael and Labour, with Fine Gael in the dominant position.  The new Taoiseach is therefore going to be Dame Enda Average.

What the fuck is it with Dame Enda?

Here is a bloke who the general public don’t particularly like and who is even distrusted by a lot of his own party, yet he persists in the notion of being Taoiseach.

Personally I don’t like him.  He may be a thousand times better than the old cunt who is leaving but that is a reflection on the old cunt and not on Dame Enda.

Sometime last year, Vincent Browne made the comment that Dame Enda should take a bottle of whiskey and a gun into a darkened room.  Browne apologised for it afterwards and that normally would be the end of the matter.  Not so for our Dame Enda.  He is still simmering like a fucking primadonna over the episode and is now throwing a hissy fit and stamping his little foot about it.  He is refusing categorically to appear on any television show that has any connection with Vincent Browns.  What the fuck?  That is the kind of carry-on I would expect from a child, and definitely not one I would expect from the future leader of our Gubmint.

Dame Enda should get out of the fucking driving seat.  He is totally unfit for purpose, and should stand aside for someone else.  If he gets into a strop over a joke [albeit a very bad one] on television, whet the hell is he going to be like when dealing with that shower of fuckwads in Brussels.  He will probably burst into tears the first time anyone looks crosswise at him.

Herself likes him.

She says he has a nice smile.

*sigh*

Forty years a growing

February 4th, 2011

Back in 1971 I had a rather nasty dose of glandular fever.

When I say nasty, I mean nasty.  I was bedridden and incapacitated for three weeks or so.  As a result of the incapacity, I didn’t shave, so by the time I was back on my feet, I had a reasonably respectable beard.  Just for the hell of it, I decided to leave it, and there it has remained ever since.

Actually, that’s not true.  When our K8 was a nipper, I shaved it off and just left a moustache, but the result frightened the child so I had to grow it back again.

I like my beard for two reasons. 

The first, as I discovered during my clean-shaven experiment is that it keeps me nice and warm.  The second is that it is nice not to have to worry about shaving every day.  All it takes is a slash with the scissors a few times a year.

Lately, out of pure curiosity I have been tempted to have another blast at being clean shaven, but Herself doesn’t like the idea.  I don’t know why, but she can be a little strange at times.  So it looks like it shall remain.

Like myself, it has grown old and grey in the past forty years since it first sprouted.  It is the greyest part of me now, though the rest of my hair is slowly catching up.  And the hat does match the handbag, if you are interested.

I am really quite attached to it now, as anyone who witnesses the grandchildren trying to swing out of it will testify.  I think I’ll resign myself to being somewhat hairy for the rest of my days.

It’s a fucking bitch when jam or marmalade gets stuck in it though…..

Have a guess

February 3rd, 2011

I watched a film last night.

Well, when I say I watched it, I half watched as it was about American teenage boys.  It wasn’t my kind of film at all, but it had a lovely guitar soundtrack so I left it running for Herself to watch.  Films calm her down.

Half listening to the film, I firmed up on a conclusion that I had reached a long time ago…

American teenagers are fucking stupid.

They really don’t know anything.  Not a single fact rattles around their empty heads.  If you asked them the colour of milk they couldn’t tell you.  And how did I reach this conclusion?  Because every single thing they say ends in ‘I guess’. 

“Are you male or female?”  “I’m male, I guess.”

“Are you alive or dead?”  “I’m alive, I guess.”

Why do they have to guess everything?  Aren’t they sure?  Are they so lacking in knowledge of their surroundings that they have to guess every single answer?

There is an advertising company here that made an advertisement for some shit or other.  They made outrageous claims about the product and followed each claim with the word ‘fact’.

“Our product kills all germs.  Fact!”

“Our product is the best on the market.  Fact!”

Shouting ‘fact’ all the time is just as irritating as hearing the ubiquitous ‘I guess’.  Maybe we should send that advertising company to America?  Teenagers there might grow in confidence a bit when facts are shouted at them all the time, and the company mightn’t be so fucking sure of itself after hearing all those guesses.

Just a thought.

I guess.

The Honey Pot

February 2nd, 2011

Well, they are out of the traps and running.

The election campaigns are already in full swing, and so far I am thoroughly underwhelmed.

So far, all I have heard is the usual petty point-scoring and bickering,  each party trying to outdo the other by catching them out on trifling matters and essentially just confusing people.

They have all missed the point.

They think we wanted the old crowd out and a new crowd in.  Wrong.  We wanted the old crowd out of course, and the quicker the better, but we don’t want to replace them with a bunch of different faces spewing out the same tired old policies that have destroyed the country.  I have lost count of the number of times I have heard that  what we want is a different system, not just a different party.

The old system is corrupt, expensive and it doesn’t work.  Representatives that are elected on parish pump issues are by definition not the right people to run the country.  They may be good at getting pot-holes in the road filled, or fixing peoples driving test problems, but that does not qualify them to negotiate far reaching financial policies with foreign banks, or understand all the petty regulations which are foisted on us by Europe.

It is my contention that the system will never work all the time we elect people on local issues who then have to deal with national issues.  By all means, elect people on local issues, but let those elections be for local councils and not the national parliament.  National elections should be on national issues only, and furthermore should be based on an all-Ireland constituency.  If I like the policies of Joe Rasher from Galway, I should be allowed vote for him and not the plonker who is standing in my area.  Furthermore, this system would allow for far fewer TDs.  Why do we elect 166, who spend their time not turning up, when a handful would do?  Essentially the government in power only needs say two people for each ministry.  The rest are superfluous and damned expensive.

The way we are going now is just going to lead to a repetition of the old problems – TDs who see the Dail as a cosy honey pot where protection of their own salaries and pensions is more important than the protection of the country.

That may sound cynical but I have been watching Irish politics for too long.

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