Our Glorious Government categorically refuse to admit that they fucked up our economy with their tax breaks for builders, and their turning a blind eye to the bank’s activities.  Oh no.  It was the downturn in the global economy that caused our crash and they are all squeaky clean.

Our wonderful rail crowd refuse to admit that they fucked up an inspection of a railway bridge on the main Dublin to Belfast line [which subsequently collapsed].  Oh no.  It was fucking Global Warming!!!!

Our Catholic Church cannot understand why we are annoyed with them for covering up their decades of child abuse, buggery and rape.  It’s the fault of the media, or the work of the devil himself.  It’s nothing to do with them though.  Squeaky clean.

Every daily fiasco in this banana republic is blamed on someone else.  They spend more time trying to find who to blame than they do trying to find the root cause of the problem.

Why?

What is so fucking difficult about admitting you were wrong?

I got a comment on a piece I scribbled last week.  I thought it was spam because of the name of the user – The South of France Guide, and I sent a rather rude reply.  It transpired that they were a genuine commenter, and they wrote to me and said they were not best pleased.  I can’t say I blame them.  I wrote back and apologised, and I hope they accept that apology, though I can’t blame them if they don’t.

I hold my hand up and admit I made a mistake.  I was dog tired on the day, and that is a bad time to make hasty decisions.  I fucked up.

Or there again….

it could have been Global Warming?

Normally I would include people in this hall of fame because of an irrational desire just to have a good kicking.

This week’s candidate is more than that.  I have a rational desire to smack her one with the back of a shovel, but she still fits the bill, because she’s an ugly cow.

From the irrational point of view, I just hate her sulky scowl.  She rarely smiles, and has one of those voices that drones on on a monotone that is a guaranteed cure for insomnia, if it weren’t for the fact that she talks such bullshit.  This is a face that definitely requires a drastic piece of reshaping, preferably by non-surgical methods.

On the rational side, she is a fucking menace to the public.

Once again, there is another scandal in the health service.  One of the nation’s major hospitals has admitted that 57,000 x-rays were never reviewed by a consultant.  This has resulted in at least one death.  On top of that, they never bothered even opening 3,500 letters of referral from GPs.  This is a mess that is just another in a long litany of cock-ups, foul-ups and disasters in our health service, which all started when our Minister for Obesity Health decided to ‘reform’ the health service.  All she has succeeded in doing is to dismantle a system that worked reasonably well, and replace it with a bureaucratic nightmare that doesn’t function at all, but costs the state a staggering fortune per year.

The worst part about it is that she refuses to see what a monumental bollix she has made of the system.  She just keeps digging us deeper and deeper into this appalling mess.

And where is she now during this latest revelation about the x-rays?

She is swanning around New fucking Zealand with her husband at our expense. We are paying for her to have a nice little holiday on the pretext of ‘an official visit’ for Paddy’s Day which isn’t until next week.  God give me fucking strength.

This cow is a menace to society.

She is a corpuscle on the face of mankind.

Pass me my hob-nails.

I let it pass, as I let a lot of things pass [like No Smoking Day in the UK] because, well, I didn’t have much to say about it.  I just ignored it.

Yesterday I read a post by Sabrina Dent in which she comments on being mentioned as a “Top Female Web Designer” and takes umbrage, as well she might.

I do not understand the compulsion to gather us together and stick us in a special little ghetto. I don’t want to be praised for my gender; I want to be respected for my work on its own merits.

Now this did get me thinking, coming on top of Women’s Day as it nearly did.

What the fuck is this thing about segregating women?  I just don’t get it.

Women are different from men.  We know that.  They have soft bumpy bits, and they lack dangly bits, and they can’t park a car if their life depended on it, but apart from that they aren’t much different.  I grant you they can have babies where men can’t, but they’re welcome to that little trick.

Now Sabrina is a top class web designer, but why should she be celebrated just because she can’t park a car?  Why should there be a special day set aside for women just because they lack dangly bits and can’t read a fucking map?  Why should women have their own days and groups just because they can’t pee standing up?  I’m baffled.

There is no International Men’s Day, and that doesn’t bother me.  I don’t know what I would do with it anyway.  Would I have to walk around all day with no trousers on to show my pride in being a man?  International Women’s Day doesn’t seem to do much for women either.  It’s just a load of [lack of] bollox, if you ask me – which you didn’t. They waffle about it and it gets a mention in the papers [at the bottom left hand corner of page 16] but that is about the limit of it.  I don’t know why they bother with it at all.  It’s just an irritation.  It’s not as if women walked around all day with no clothes on to show their pride in being a woman?

Now there’s a thought…….

As I have said here before, I was somewhat erring on the tired side, so I thought that while I was there I would have a mug of strong coffee.

It was very pleasant outside the coffee shop.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing and the ice was nearly melting on the footpaths.  There was a feeling of Spring in the air.

As I was leaving, I found my way blocked by two elderly women.  I know I am getting on in years, but these two were old.  One stood firmly in my way and glowered at me.

“Are you Low Cal?” she asked in that terrible accent that sends shivers down my spine. Forget your swallows or your cuckoos – the Americans have arrived!

“They call me Polly Unsaturated” says I as pleasantly as possible while wondering what the fuck she was on about.

“Do you live around here, Polly?” she asked without missing a beat, and in a voice that started dogs barking a quarter of a mile away.

Ah!  She was asking if I was local.  Fucking Americans.

“I do,” I replied.

“Is this it?” she asked sweeping her hand around to indicate the village.  “Are there no more shops than this?”

It was the way she said that last bit that did it.  I can take a lot, and had even silently vowed to be nicer to tourists this year, but what the fuck did she expect in a country village?  A fucking Walmart on every corner and the gaps filled in with drive through McDonalds?

“That’s all there is,” I said in a take it or leave it kind of way.  “It’s just a country village, and that’s the way we like it.”

“I know it’s just a country village!” she barked in unison with the dogs in the distance.  “I just expected a bit more.”

Well, fuck her.  I bet she comes from Hicksville, Arizona too.  She was really pissing me off at this stage.

“Is there any WahDur around here?” she said as if accusing me of murdering someone.

“Water?” I said.  I was about to suggest she ask for a glass of the stuff when she ordered her coffee, but realised she meant more than that.  “There’s a river under the bridge over there,” I said helpfully.

“I mean real WahDur” she snarled.  Fuck me but she was a prime example of womanhood at its worst.

“Go a few miles that way and you’ll come to the sea?”

“Would that be the Addalantic?” she asked suspiciously.

“No.  The Irish Sea.  It’s smaller but just as wet.  If you sail across it you’ll come to Wales.”

“What would I want to go to Wales for?  We’ve just come from there.”

I sighed. 

“Would you like some real shopping?” I asked.  “Somewhere you can buy real, authentic Aran sweaters, and CDs of Riverdance?”

“That would be good,” she muttered, but I could see she was hooked. 

I gave her the directions, and left her to turn her coffee sour.  Not a fucking word of thanks, or a farewell, or even a ’have a nice day’.

Later they drove past me, following the directions I had given.  I waved to them, but they ignored me.

I hope they enjoyed their drive.  It’s a beautiful road with incredible scenery.  There are no shops or tourist attractions ruining the distant vistas, just endless miles of bogland.

No American has ever come back alive from The Bogs.

I felt good.  Summer really is coming.

I don’t know what the cause was.  It was just one of those things.  For hours, I lay in bed and stared at the darkness, but the brain just refused to sleep.

Eventually, I did nod off, and was woken by the dog a couple of hours later.  Once again, I was wide awake, so I decided to cut my losses and get up.

Yesterday was a shit day.  I like my sleep, and when I don’t get it, I’m like Mary Harney without the HRT.  All day, I wandered around in a bit of a haze, kicking the guinea pigs [they make quite good footballs, incidentally] and generally breaking things.

My one consolation was that I knew I would have a grand sleep last night, because I was knackered.  I didn’t get to bed too early because a certain dimwit had fucked up his site, and he came clamouring to me, late in the evening to fix it.  I told him to fuck off, but he said he’d pay me in pints at the Blog Awards.  That was enough for me, so I set about fixing it.

I quit after a couple of hours, and went to bed.

Do you think I could sleep?  Like fuck, I could.

I lay there for five hours or so staring at my old friend the darkness.  I tossed and turned but Morpheus had fucked off on his holidays.  No sleep.  Not a single fucking wink.

I got up as dawn broke, as I was sick of the tossing and turning.  I went back to Dimwit’s site and eventually fixed his problem.  Three hours in total, it took me.

I did some sums.

I think I am worth around €100 per hour as a consultant.  Three hours?  Three hundred smackers.  Converted to pints, that comes out at somewhere around eighty pints that Dimwit owes me.

Now, I should sleep after that…………

First and foremost, I think I deserve some [hah! some?] pints with my old friends that I met in the previous couple of sessions.

Another reason is that there are a lot of you women who attended last year, who would like a second crack at The Ultimate Sensual Experience.  It’s true what they say about the oldest fiddle making the sweetest music, as I’m sure you will agree?  However, on my doctor’s advice, I’m afraid I have to limit myself to no more that eight women this year, so it will be on a first cum come first served basis, as it were.

Also I have booked a place further west for the next few nights, so Galway is merely an overnight stop on the way to better things.

The one reason I am not going is to pick up an award, as I very much doubt that that will happen.  It didn’t happen last year [ya miserable fuckers!] so I’m not holding my breath for this year.

There is one thing that does concern me about the Awards thing though, and that is Herself.

You see, she isn’t fit.

I have noticed this lately.  It takes her twice as long now to plant a field of potatoes as it used to.  I also notice that when I let her carry my bags, she tends to drop them a lot.  It was time I did something about it.

I went and bought a Wii.

I have never bought a games console before, and the very name of the Wii makes me want to vomit, but in times of crisis I have to put my principles to one side.  I really need her to be fit in case she has to carry me anywhere.

I set it up, and she insisted that I try it first, so I did.  I am, apparently a perfect specimen of manhood, but then you all know this anyway.  My balance is perfect and my Body Mass Index is bang in the middle of the ‘Ideal’ range.  I did a few exercises and notched up quite a good score.

Then it was her turn.

She stepped up onto the little pad thingy, and the Wii screamed.  She fell off with the fright and landed on the coffee table, which of course smashed.  She then tried standing on one leg.  That went well…. for about half a second.  She slowly keeled over, like one of those brick chimneys being demolished, and ended in a heap in the dog’s bed.  She cried; I sighed.

I think there is a lot of work to be done before the end of the month.

That is one huge fucking number.

500,000.

Half a million miles will get you to the Moon and back.

Half a million hours ago, I hadn’t even started in Junior Infants.

Half a million days ago, Ireland was still ruled by the Celts.

Half a million Euro would nearly pay a minister’s salary for a whole year.

Half a million words is two thirds the total output from Shakespeare, or two thirds of the entire bible.

That is a lot of fucking words.

It is the number of words I have written since I started this lark.

I must be mad.

For reasons beyond my sphere of influence, I was a little tied up yesterday.  I would have been more tied up but Herself always was fucking useless at tying knots.

I had things to do; people to meet and, when you boil it down to the essentials, a life to lead.  In other words, I didn’t have the time or the inclination to scribble on this site.

Now, I knew I was in safe hands.  I knew you would drop by and having found no new material would while away your hours finding those gems that you had missed in the past.  I refuse to believe that you have read everything that I have ever written [even I haven’t done that] , so I can guarantee there are hidden treasures that you have missed.

I finally got around to switching on my laptop last night, and what did I find?

I found that you bastards hadn’t bothered your arses dropping by at all.

OK, there were one or two who had enough of a soul to visit, but the rest of you are just fickle, fly-by-night fair-weather users. Have you not heard all those advertisements asking you to check on your elderly neighbours?  For all you know, I could have been dying here of hypothermia and starvation, but do you care?  Not a fucking jot.

You see, I am now officially an Old Age Pensioner.  I must be treated with respect and reverence.  I must be treated with care and most of all, you need to make sure that I am OK.

Yes, I am disappointed, and more than a little hurt.  I thought you cared, but you are more interested in your fucking iPods and your fucking Facebook than you are in my welfare.

I have a good mind to start charging entry into this site.  By God, but when you have paid your €1,000 per year to visit, you’ll want to get your money’s worth and will drop by whether I have written or not.

I was so disheartened last night that I had to console myself by leaving sarcastic comments on Twitter about Ireland’s entry for the Eurovision which was being voted for on the Late Late Show.

The entries were like you lot.

Pathetic.

This doesn’t surprise me because every fucking day is World Somefuckingthing Day, so I suppose books must get an elbow in at some stage.

I received my first cheque from the publishers a couple of weeks ago for my Magnum Opus.  Quite an occasion?  I brought it to my bank to lodge it, and there were the usual embarrassing scenes where the manager came out with the champagne and cigars [whereupon we had to go outside to smoke ‘em in the rain, which wasn’t exactly the ambience he was trying to create?].  He started plying me with leaflets telling me all about their fantastic investment schemes, and I told him to fuck himself, that the money was already spoken for to pay the balance on that island in the South Pacific.  Did he honestly think I was going to hand my money over to a fucking bank to mind?

Anyhow, I digress.

Apparently, World Book Day is a day for encouraging people to read, and there is an emphasis on reading sessions in libraries.  I have already contacted as many libraries as I can find and have received promises from them that my book will be on the reading list for the children’s sessions.  It’s wonderful what a simple threat of arson will achieve?  I didn’t particularly like resorting to threats, but I consider it my mission in life to broaden people’s minds, and where better to start than with the young?

I see those fucking publishers have dropped the price of The Book a tad, which means the next cheque will be a bit smaller.  Bastards.

If you want to get your orders in for Mother’s Day [assuming you really hate your mother?] then you had better hurry – Amazon in the US have only five left, and there are just two left in the UK.

I see there is a new review on the US site.  It’s long and rambling, but reasonably flattering.  They end up with the paragraph:

Head rambles is a delightful read which makes you stop and laugh at the small things that make Irish life unique. The random order of stories and topics makes the book feel how it was meant to; like a witty, grumpy old man venting his frustrations about everyday life to the world.
You can almost see him sitting at the laptop with a cup of tea and his pipe. Highly recommended.

I wouldn’t object to this apart from the second last sentence – “You can almost see him sitting at the laptop with a cup of tea and his pipe”.  What the fuck do they mean by that?  “You can almost see him”? 

Are they implying that it’s all a figleaf of my mind?

Do they think I am making it all up?

Fucking nerve!

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

These are probably the most famous words in the American Declaration of Independence.  I would consider them to be probably the most basic rights of any man on earth.

The Americans are always on about liberty, and make great play about how they are probably the freest society on the planet.  I would argue that, especially since they introduced their Homeland Security thing, but that’s not what I’m on about today.

I was browsing yesterday when I read a piece in The Rest of the Story.  Quite honestly I had to read it a couple of times before I could believe my eyes.

"To further our mission of building healthier communities, effective February, 1, 2010, Memorial Health Care System will no longer hire individuals who use tobacco or nicotine products in any form. Memorial Health Care System and its affiliates recognize the major importance of associates’ health and well being, and the responsibility of maintaining a healthy and safe environment for all associates, volunteers, patients and visitors. Therefore, all individuals who are offered a position with Memorial Health Care System or any of its affiliates, are screened for illegal drug, alcohol, and/or tobacco/nicotine use as part of the post-offer health screening. Individuals whose post-offer health screening results are verified positive for illegal drugs, alcohol, and/or tobacco/nicotine use, and/or whose reference and/or background checks are verified unsatisfactory, will be disqualified from employment, their job offer will be withdrawn, and they may be disqualified from applying for employment for six (6) months from the date of the post-offer health screening."

In the land of Freedom; the land of Liberty, an organisation is refusing to employ people who have contact with nicotine.  Now, the anti-tobacco crowd will see nothing wrong with this and maybe even some of you rational people may see no problem here, but I would ask you to stop and think.

I suppose it is within the realms of logic that a company could refuse to employ smokers.  There is a marginal argument that a company may not like their workers nipping outdoors for a fag break during working hours.  I would contend that if a company were so concerned, that they should fight to have the indoor smoking ban removed. 

However, when you examine this ‘mission statement’ above, you will find they are going do regular screening – presumably blood/urine tests? – and therefore a person who may smoke say two cigarettes a day over breakfast is ineligible for employment. 

However, this is not the ultimate farce.

A person who may be trying to give up smoking, with the aid of nicotine patches or an inhaler cannot be employed.

This drive against smoking is reaching new depths of depravity.  We are reaching a level where the mere mention of nicotine will be a crime.  Irrespective of the fact that there is no scientific proof whatsoever that nicotine causes to anyone [with the possible exception of the smoker, but I would even dispute that] there is a drive to criminalise a sizeable portion of society.  Not only that, but they are criminalising even those who are trying to quit smoking.  Smokers are now not only being treated as second class citizens, with no rights, but are actually being deemed unemployable.  Where is the liberty here?  Where is the right to the pursuit of happiness here?

This doesn’t just concern smokers.  This should concern every single right thinking person.

This is not about smoking.  This is about how a group of fanatics whose cause is based on hearsay, prejudice and irrational fear can inveigle their way so deeply into society that their twisted thinking becomes the norm.

Do we want a world where one group can discriminate so outrageously against another?

Do we want a world where, on the unsubstantiated claims of one group can turn another group into second class citizens?

Today, it’s smokers.  Tomorrow it will be drinkers, eaters, you name it.

Am I the only person who is terrified at the way the world is going?