Ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Posted on | September 2, 2010 | 5 Comments
I’ve taken to reading a bit of science fiction lately, as a change from the usual. Space, future, wars, telecasting, fugue states, time travel of a fashion, and loads of other stuff. It’s all good.
There’s one bit in the book I’m reading the moment where the chap in question has too many martinis (good to know we’ll not have descended into a race of Jaeger-bombing halfwits, even fictionally) and wakes up with an enormous hangover. He then simply takes a pill the next day and within seconds his hangover is gone. Disappeared. I want this.
I’m enjoying the stories but every so often I stop and really regret the fact that I’ll never get to see any of the cool stuff they’re going to invent in the future.
Dr Murphy
Posted on | September 1, 2010 | 28 Comments
She was mad, the doctor next door.
We knew she was mad because she had the ‘Surgery’ sign outside her house but nobody ever came to get well. She had the black sign, the white writing, and even when the young man was run down by a car outside they didn’t go into her. Instead they chose the acoholic further up the road.
We knew she was mad when the first time the ball went over into her back garden and one of us clambered over to get it we discovered she’d concreted over the lawn. Why didn’t she have some grass like everyone else? If you called to the door you had to sit in the front room, statues of St Anthony and pictures of the blessed virgin on the wall, and she’d talk to you.
And talk. And talk. And because you were young and didn’t want to be rude you listened and then, after ages, you were so uncomfortable you said you had to go and she’d ask why you came and you’d stammer and say the ball, the back garden, and she’d go out, all 5’1 of her and give it back to you. Sometimes anyway. Other times she’d just burst it.
One night she came hammering on the door, screeching about something. I don’t know what. I was small. It was scary. She just needed the hat and the broom to be the witch. She had the wart. She only went when threats to call the police were issued.
Then you got a bit older and realised she wasn’t that scary. She was just small. Her husband had died. Both the signs were gone. The garden was still concrete and she was an old woman, suffering the effects of age. A mind deteriorating, stricken with loneliness and dementia.
When the man across the road went missing they all worried because his family told everyone he had the alzheimer’s and had wandered off. We helped look for him. When nobody saw the doctor next door for ages nobody worried. There was nobody to tell us she’d fallen down the stairs, nobody to tell us she’d been there weeks at the bottom, her head turned the wrong way around, alone in her house without her husband, with only her statues and her pictures.
And my burst ball in the back garden.
Fuck off Tony Blair
Posted on | September 1, 2010 | 47 Comments
Tony Blair is coming to Dublin on Saturday for a book signing in Eason’s. Strict rules will apply:
Those who wish to have their copy of his autobiography A Journey signed at the store in O’Connell Street will have to check in all bags, including purses and phones into a holding point.
There will be no customer photography and no personal dedication. Wristbands will be issued for the event and will have to be removed after signing.
There will be no guarantee that people who get wristbands will get their books signed as Mr Blair will be operating to a tight timetable.
Firstly, I have no idea why anybody would buy his book, let alone want it signed. Blair is the British Bertie, just a bit more warmongering. Anyone who contributes to his retirement fund by buying his book is tool, in my opinion. Then jumping through those sort of hoops just to get his signature on it … come on.
Have a bit of self-respect and treat him the way he deserves to be treated. I would imagine the security presence means throwing bricks at him won’t be tolerated so the next best thing to do is ignore him.
He’s a contemptible, arrogant, religious zealot who thinks Irish people should set aside personal freedoms just so he might deign to sign their book?
What a fucking cunt.
And this is worth a read, just in case you didn’t think he was a cunt. Because he is one, you know. He really is.
They’re at least 8000 times worse than the KLF
Posted on | August 31, 2010 | 39 Comments
Flaming Nora
Posted on | August 31, 2010 | 15 Comments
So Mick Lally dies the Gaiety School of Acting celebrates 25 years in existence. Coincidence?
To be honest, I don’t see how the two are in any way related whatsoever. It did intrigue me to see the story in the Irish Times though. The GS of A marked the occasion by setting somebody’s head on fire. Oh actors, they’re so zany and different.
I used to know a few people who went to that acting school. Worked with them down in Leeson Street in the day. A couple of them worked behind the bars, one of them hilariously worked on the door of nightclubs despite being the same size as Tom Cruise. He had his beefier brother to protect him though.
There’s no better way to get to know somebody than over a bottle of £22 Liebfraumilch at 5.30am when all the sloppy drunken wankers had gone home. We remain fast friends to this day. That’s a lie. I’ve never seen any of them since and I’m glad of it.
I do like the idea of setting people’s heads on fire as a celebration though. Does Joe Duffy have an anniversary coming up in RTE? We could bring his career to a whole new level as the Irish Simon Weston.
Mad (wo)men
Posted on | August 30, 2010 | 33 Comments
I do like Mad Men and like most men with a pulse I find Joan a most excellent character, but she does have a way of smiling which just makes me think ‘evil clown’.
Sinky
Posted on | August 30, 2010 | 32 Comments
My memory is not what it once was. And what it was was shit to begin with. Thankfully I’ve got good friends to prompt me when I forget.
Last week I was supposed to get my car inusrance renewed. Totally slipped my mind but thankfully my good pal Jari Litmanen was on hand to ensure I got it done. The same day I would have completely neglected to buy a card for Jimmy the Bollix’s son’s birthday if it hadn’t been for Tommi Mäkinen and I can’t speak highly enough of Hollywood director Renny Harlin for making sure I sorted out that thing with those chaps who owed me that money.
Thankfully, despite my increasing forgetfulness, there is always some Finn there to remind me.
Billy Whizz
Posted on | August 27, 2010 | 74 Comments
The other week I mentioned a little chap who sat on my doorstep because he was sad. It seems we’re now fast friends because every time he sees me he says “Hello again!” and whizzes off up the street on his scooter.
Yesterday I was walking down the road and he said “Hello again!”
“Hello”, I said. “How are you?”
“I’m fast!”, he said, before speeding off up the road, proving that he’s not one for the spoofing.
What’s the normal response when you ask someone how they are?
“I’m grand”.
“Struggling on, you know yourself”.
“Not too bad”.
“Ahh, could be worse”.
All of which are just stock responses. Which is probably a good thing. Stopping to think how you really are might not be the best idea these days.
One thing’s for sure though, even with careful consideration, it’s never anything really excellent like “I’m fast”. The worst thing about being a kid is that you have no appreciation of just how awesome it is to be a kid.
I see, yes
Posted on | August 26, 2010 | 48 Comments
“So, customer service lady, the preceding part of the conversation which will not be repeated here on this blog because it’s too long and complicated, is the basis for my complaint. I should point out that despite the measured tone to my voice I am furious”.
“Well sir, I understand why that might be but the thing is I’m just going to repeat back to you what you just said in a highly patronising and-”
“But-”
“May I finish? I let you speak now you can show me the same courtesy? Can you?”
*seeth*
“Thank you. You see, the thing you just explained to me in great detail is exactly what I’m going to tell you. And there you go”.
“Do you think I’m stupid or something?”
“How dare you. I said nothing of the sort”.
“I didn’t say you said it. I asked if you thought I was stupid”.
“No, I don’t think that”.
“Ok then, can you please explain to me why you just explained to me what I explained to you at the start of this phone call?”
“Erm …”
“I. Understand. The. Facts. Perfectly. What I want to do is express to you my extreme displeasure at what has gone on and I am hoping, foolishly I know, that you might be able to do something about it. Can you do something about it?”
“Well, you see, all I can do is just explain the same thing to you again but this time try and sound as if I’m sorry for you but instead just come across as more patronising”.
“I thought as much. Do you have a supervisor there?”
“I’m afraid nobody is available right now”.
“And if I write a letter wishing, with all due respect, to address it to somebody with a little more seniority than you, to whom do I address it?”
“Customer Relations Unit”.
“Is that an android?”
“What?”
“It doesn’t sound like somebody’s name to me. Can you please give me a name to whom I can address my letter”.
“No. Just ‘Customer Relations Unit’”.
“And can you understand how that might be perceived as not particularly customer friendly?”
“No”.
“I didn’t think so. Well, I’m going to hang up now because you have been about as much use to me as a shoe”.
“If there’s anything we can do to help yo-”
*click*
—
This conversation has been repeated so that if, at some stage in the next 24-48 hours I am arrested for causing a disturbance at, in, or around a financial institution, there’s not a judge in the land that would convict me.
I hope.
SUPER POWER
Posted on | August 25, 2010 | 21 Comments
If I was an evil superhero one of the first things I would do is perfect the power to make frozen food be its age the minute it was defrosted.
So you have a delicious t-bone in the freezer, you take it out a couple of weeks later and it defrosts into a greenish/purple lump. Sort of like the way David Bowie aged in The Hunger.
You would fear me.
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