You can go to the middle of the Sahara Desert and get incredibly detailed photographs of what?  Fucking sand.  That’s what.  Who wants incredibly detailed photographs of sand, except maybe a crab?  And I doubt they use Google Earth much.

Some years ago, when they brought in those damned Nanny Laws about smoking here, we started taking our holidays in Norn Iron.  They were civilised up there, and allowed smoking in the pubs, and the Guinness was cheaper.  We stayed in a lovely quiet little spot in a small village within crawling distance of two pubs.  It was lovely.

As I said, it’s a very small village, but guess what?  They not only have detailed photographs, but they have the whole fucking area covered with their Street View.  I even found the house we used to stay in.  It looks small, but it was lovely and cosy, with a big log fire, and Sandy was welcome too.

Move south of the border to Real Ireland, and what do you get?  Sweet fuck all.

Google Earth seem to have stuck us at the bottom of the list.  They do have a few areas covered all right.  My own gaff is well photographed, but what the fuck use is that?  I know what my place looks like, and they had a fucking liberty photographing it anyway without asking permission.  I didn’t even get a chance to mow my lawns first.

Suppose I want to look at Ireland’s most popular hunting tourist spot though?  This is what I get when I try to look at Killarney.

I need Google Earth.  I need to plan my hunting trips holidays.  I need detail, and all I get is a fucking smudge.

Surely Ireland isn’t that hard to find?  For fuck’s sake we are a fairly large island just to the west of the Isle of Man.  We are even big enough to have our own postage stamps.

Come on, Google Earth.

What the fuck is keeping you?

It has depressed me beyond your wildest imagination.

It started with a simple visit to the coffee shop.  There were some tourists who pissed me off so I decided to send them to meet their ancestors.  I nipped back to the car, and then it happened.  I realised that I had left all my hunting equipment at home.  I drove home as fast as I could but by the time I got back to the village the feckers had gone.

This has never happened to me before.  My quarry has always ended in the quarry, and the vision of those bastards who got away will haunt me to my dying day.

I have decided it’s because I am getting old.

I knew this day would come eventually, and have already made the appropriate arrangements.  I am already a member of Dignitas and have informed my solicitor that I am quite prepared to make my own choice about the date and manner of my exit from this life.  The one thing I refuse to even contemplate is the vision of myself sitting in the corner of some Old Folk’s Home, dribbling, pissing and shitting myself and mumbling incoherently about the good old days.  And if anyone says that is the way I am now, you can go fuck off.

My arrangement are quite comprehensive.

I already have my open ended one way tickets to Switzerland.  I need two tickets, because I have to be accompanied, apparently.  I have arranged a surprise trip for Herself here.  She has always said she wanted to visit Switzerland.  There is no point in her returning to Ireland as, in the old Celtic tradition, I shall be burning my house to the ground before I leave, so I will be booking Herself into Dignitas at the same time.  Actually, rather than burning the house down, I shall be using Semtex and Nitro Glycerine as I intend to go with a bang.  I had better warn the neighbours to start looking for alternative accommodation beforehand?

So there you have it.

I shall be winding this site up shortly and shall be taking my one way trip.

…..

But there again, I have just remembered that trip to the coffee shop was after forty eight hours without sleep……

Maybe on second thoughts, I’ll postpone Switzerland for a while.

I’m off out now.

Today is the biggest day in the sporting calendar.

They have lost the run of themselves again though, in typical Irish fashion.

No longer content with a few blokes wandering down O’Connell Street following a couple of geezers wheezing on some bagpipes, we now have to have a fucking festival.

Again, I have nothing against festivals, and am quite prepared to watch a few very scantily clad women develop frostbite for my delectation, but let’s not lose the run of ourselves?  All these damned American ‘pipe bands’ and Rio de Janeiro type floats are just going too far.  There is nothing Paddy’s Day about them?

The Paddy’s Day Festival kicked off with a grand fireworks display down in Limerick.  I suppose that had to find some way of disposing of all the explosives they had found down there, and it makes a change from murdering each other, but has no one notice the incongruity of the title?  Paddy’s Day festival?  Paddy’s Day isn’t until Wednesday, for fuck’s sake, and they start it on a Saturday?

Once again, I have nothing whatsoever against people enjoying themselves, and if that were the extent of it, then let people get pissed and beat each other up in the streets – that’s part of modern society – but what really pisses me off are the crowd who haul in on the back of all this frivolity.

The main criminals are our Glorious Government.  This is their annual holiday at the taxpayers’ expense.  They see this as a glorious excuse to jet off the the far flung corners of the earth on the pretext of drumming up trade.  Has one single job ever been created by these jaunts?  Are foreign companies so fucking gullible that they will set up in Ireland because some fucking minister bought them a pint on Paddy’s Day.  Fuck off!!

I notice that these ‘trade missions’ are very nicely located.  Auckland?  Sydney?  New York?  Tokyo?  Very nice, at this time of year.  Most are heading off for a week or so, but of course Harney has to have 15 fucking days in New Zealand with her husband.  And these little jollies are all paid for by the taxpayer, who was recently told that there is no money left, and that we all have to pay extra to solve the financial crisis.

A small thing that irritates me about this time of year is the insistence of barmen at scribing a shamrock on the head of a pint of Guinness.  What the fuck is that all about?  Do they think we are all fucking tourists who are going to melt at the Irishness of it all?  They’ll be giving away fluffy leprechauns and floppy green hats next.  It is fucking embarrassing.  Wankers.

At this time of year, our local barman Pullit always draws a neat penis on the heads of the pints he pulls.

Now, he has the right idea.

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?

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…….

Apparently though they have scratch cards.  I don’t know if you get one free with every ticket, which I doubt, as Ryanair seem to charge you for breathing, or whether you buy them on the flight.

I do know a bit about scratch cards, even though I don’t buy them either.  However, I have bought them, scratched them and collected my winnings.  One thing I do know about them is that if you win more than a certain amount, then you have to collect your winnings elsewhere, as presumably most shops don’t carry thousands in cash, just in case.

Apparently, a passenger on a Ryanair flight had one of these scratch cards. He scratched it, and blow me down with a feather – he won.   €10,000.  A nice little sum?

Now Ryanair are the type of airline who would, if they could get away with it, ask their cabin crew not to wear underwear and their cockpit crew to fly naked, as it would cut down on weight and increase profits.  The idea of lugging €10,000 in notes all the time would be an anathema to them.  In other words – they don’t carry that kind of cash around with them.

Our friend who won wasn’t too happy with this.  He threw a hissy fit.  He demanded his winnings on the spot.

He was told he would have to collect his winning when they landed.

If I were in his shoes, I would spend the rest of the flight happily dreaming up ways and means of spending €10,000.  That represents quite a few pints of Guinness.  It represents a very nice holiday somewhere.  If Romania were the land of your dreams, you could probably buy yourself a house there.

This wasn’t good enough for our friend.  He stamped his little foot and demanded his money there and them.  Maybe he wasn’t the dreaming type?

In frustration, what did he do?

He ate the scratch card.

As gestures go, that was quite spectacular.  I’m not sure what he gained by it, but I do know he lost €10,000.

I hope it tasted nice.

It was the most expensive meal he ever had.

Don’t believe me?

After all, it is not every day one wakes up for the first time as an official pensioner?  Not that I feel any different, but fuckit, I can now put pensioner down as my official occupation.

I had my mug of tea, and fed the guinea swine and then had a browse of the Interweb.  One of the first things to pop up was a post on one of my regular reads.

After a very long and difficult journey, Xbox is a daddy at long last!!

It sort of puts my new life into perspective when Sanne is really starting hers.

I am thrilled for them.  Their journey has been full of disappointments and difficulties, but Xbox has brought us with him on that journey with courage and humour.

So get your arses over there to Xbox4NappyRash and congratulate them.

I was under the impression that American Football was supposed to be the ultimate in macho-male sports.

Until I saw this:

Though apparently English Soccer is no different?

I live and learn.

I have found that one answer to this little problem is to partake in some vigorous exercise.

Invariably at times like this, my thoughts turn to my true love.

She always provides the solution.

You know that kid Miley Cyrus?  She’s the one who was forced into a life of show business at the age of fourteen or fifteen or something by her father.  She is now probably facing a life of substance abuse and mental torment as a result.

She has a nine year old sister, Noah.  I suppose it gives a little insight into the family’s mentality that they should call a daughter Noah?

Anyway, this Noah, at the age of nine, is producing her own range of lingerie for kids!

Is it just me, or does anyone else find this deeply disturbing?

How come a man can prostitute his daughters in such a manner?

The paedophiles must love him.