Archive for the 'America' Category

How to order a Guinness

October 20th, 2010

Four years ago, I wrote a wee article.

It was a simple pub survival guide, and it became the most popular thing I ever wrote. To date, it has been read by over 75,000 people. I thought it was time to revisit the subject with a drop of illustration.

For some strange reason, people [mostly Americans] haven’t a fucking clue how to order a simple pint of Guinness. You would think it would be a straightforward process, but no.. they still fuck it up which not only means they get a shit pint, but they really piss off the barman in the process.

OK. This is the moment you have been waiting for. After waiting for fifteen minutes in the otherwise empty pub, you have finally managed to catch the barman’s eye. You are obviously a tourist, so it is tradition that you be kept waiting. However you have now ordered your first pint, and the barman starts to pour.

You have now reached your first hurdle. This is NOT a pint of Guinness. It is a partially pulled pint of Guinness. Any fuckwit who grabs it at this stage will be really lucky if they live, as barmen DO NOT like the glass to be touched. A lot of barmen keep their weapons of choice for this moment. Make a wrong move and you could be at the receiving end of a baseball bat.

Just be fucking patient and wait. If the barman wanders off, he hasn’t forgotten you – he is just waiting for the next phase.

Eventually the barman will return. Make any sort of comment about being kept waiting and the chances are you will get shot. You have waited a lifetime for this pint, and another few minutes aren’t going to make any difference. The barman now tops off the pint and will place it back on the counter. This is usually the time you offer to pay.

Right. You have paid for your pint and there it is. A full pint glass of frothing liquid. What do you do next?

No. You don’t fucking drink it. You can now remove it to wherever you want to drink it, be it at the bar or at a table, but YOU DO NOT DRINK IT. This is the moment to savour the anticipation. You may carry on a conversation, have a cigarette or just sit and watch, but it does not go near your mouth. Yet.

Right. This is the moment you have been waiting for. Note the crisp black and white? That means the pint has settled. You can now drink and enjoy.

It’s all quite simple really. Even an American should be able to understand that? I doubt it though.

-oOo-

I would like to say at tis point that no animals were harmed during the filming. I would like to thank Mash [so called because he distills the best Poiteen in the village] for his patience.

In order to bring you the best photographs, we had to do about eight takes.

Then of course I had to drink the props.

It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Where is the beef?

October 14th, 2010

A very simple question.

What is the difference between these two pictures?

A Happy Meal, my arse

The difference is six months!

That is a burger and chips that has been left on a shelf for 171 days.

Is there not something strange about that? Where is the mould? If I leave a loaf of bread lying around for a couple of days, it soon grows a grand crop of penicillin. After a couple of weeks, I would imagine the loaf would rival the Botanic Gardens.

I came across this at some stage in my Interweb meanderings. Apparently an artist decided to do a stop action series of photographs to show a meal decaying. The only problem was that the fucking thing didn’t!

I have never liked McDonalds. They are noisy uncomfortable places and their "food" is crap. How anyone can consider a trip to McDonalds as a "treat" beats me. It’s my idea of hell. Their blatantly artificial cheery happy atmosphere makes me want to puke. Their produce doesn’t do much for my stomach either.

They advertise their shit as being "healthy".

Those photographs would tend to argue otherwise?

Conspiracy or what?

October 13th, 2010

I am not one for conspiracy theories.

I couldn’t give a shite whether Armstrong walked on the moon or on a stage set.

I couldn’t give a fuck if Elvis is living in a tent in the Gobi Desert, just so long as he isn’t singing any more. I fucking hate Elvis.

I must confess though that I have always had a few questions about the World Trade Centre business.

There are niggling little things that just won’t go away.

How come, when Bush was told that an aircraft had flown into the WTC, he just shrugged and carried on listening to a children’s story? Any halfwit would know there was something serious going on and would have excused himself from the proceedings, but not our George. He just carried onj as if nothing had happened.

OK, so Bush was a idiot so maybe that was just another of his incredibly bad judgment calls? But there is one aspect of the whole affair to which I have never found a satisfactory answer – how come all the buildings fell so neatly? I know a bit about civil engineering, as it is in the family blood, so to speak. For example, I know that one of the greatest problems any demolition expert has is to get a building to collapse in on itself. It takes precision placement of explosives and the timing has to be just right. If there is any error at all, the chances are that the building will fall sideways instead of vertically. Yet in New York several buildings fell, all very nicely in a heap without very much damage to adjoining buildings. Also I find it strange that both towers collapsed. The chances of both planes hitting their respective buildings in precisely the same circumstances are a statistical impossibility [almost] yet both towers collapsed in precisely the same fashion. If one tower had survived or if they had collapsed in different ways, maybe I wouldn’t be so unsure, but for both collapses to be virtually identical is hard to swallow.

There are many other questions I have about the whole business, but I just put it down to maybe not knowing the full facts, or something.

I dismissed the whole conspiracy theory and filed it away next to the John F Kennedy file.

Yesterday I came across a video on Captain Ranty’s site. I dismissed it as yet another crackpot theory, but then I watched it.

More fucking unanswered questions to add to the stockpile.

There are times when it is very hard not to believe in conspiracies.

Damn!

Time to move on

September 11th, 2010

I always feel a sense of unease about this date.

Nine years ago I was at work when the word spread of the events in New York.  I was horrified at the time, as was the rest of the world.  Like everyone else, I mourned for the dead and was disgusted at the perpetrators of the mass slaughter.

I have since discovered that a namesake of mine was killed in the tragedy, which somehow made it more personal.

But that was nine years ago.  Since then, a futile and bloody war has been fought and lost and countless more have been killed in the name of retribution.  The casualties since that day in 2001 far outnumber the original victim count.

Back in 1974, Ireland had its own terrorist attack.  Thirty three died when bombs exploded in Dublin and Monaghan without any warning.  Thirty three may not sound very many, but in proportion to the population, it was a significant number.  If you scale the number up it would be equivalent to around 2,700 Americans, so the parallels are quite close.  Did the Irish demand war on the North, or the UK?  No.  We grieved for the dead, and have not forgotten them, but we carry on our lives.  We didn’t give the event a tacky name – it is just remembered as the Dublin Monaghan Bombings.  I doubt that the majority of Irish could even hazard a guess at the date.

I abhor the American habit of giving military sounding names to events.  In particular I abhor the expression “Ground Zero”.  It is born out of the nuclear tests of the last war, and should be confined to that period.  The expression “911” has always irritated me too.  Apart from the fact that in Europe, 9, 11 is the ninth day of November, it has become a rallying cry for America’s own fundamentalists and fanatics.

Constantly harping on about an event that is now history only serves to stir up hatred and desire for revenge.  Quietly remember the victims and mourn, but stop this fucking flag waving, sabre rattling and hyped up patriotism.  It only serves to incite hatred.

I wonder what my namesake and the other victims would think of all this hype?  Would they be happy with those thousands that were killed in their name?

I doubt it.

America – the Land of the Free

July 24th, 2010

I came across a rather startling piece of video the other day.

It’s an extract from the QI programme on BBC.  It’s supposed to be light entertainment, but the facts revealed somewhat sobered up the panellists.

Yes.  The slave trade is alive and well and living in America, the Land of the Free.

In case anyone should be in any doubt that this is happening, there is even an official industry set up – UNICOR

A bit of an eye opener, huh?

[Hat tip to Captain Ranty who pointed me in the right direction.]

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