“So bad it’s good”

by Twenty Major on September 21st, 2006

Things that are so bad they’re good annoy me.

I’m sorry to have to take this issue up but the chaps at Blogorrah have forced my hand. This campaign to get Johnny Logan to number one is a great load of steaming horse shite covered with a mug full of Saddam Hussein’s jism.

Let’s look at the facts. Johnny Logan is Ireland’s greatest ever Eurovision song contest person. He won it twice himself and wrote at least one other song which won. Despite what many gay people think the Eurovision is a load of bollocks. A perfect example of something being so bad some people think it’s tremendous because they think they’re being ironic by liking something so utterly rubbish. Eventually so many people like the crap thing it gains some measure of credibility.

Back to that in minute but let’s continue with Mr Logan. He has just realised a new version of ‘Hold me now’ (which won the Eurovision) with some ‘rapper’ called Kaye Styles. Kaye is a girl’s name. Of all the rappers he has to choose from he picks one with a girl’s name.

Anyway, as you might imagine, it’s a desperate attempt from a 52 year old former Eurovision winner to gain some ‘cred’ and get a hit outside of Germany where any old cunt can be a star as the Germans have no sense of what’s good and bad (true for music, fashion, invading other countries, genocide etc). It is also one of the worst pieces of music ever. Imagine Damien Rice, Phil Collins, David Grey and Ronan Keating getting together and taking turns raping a kitten, recording its shrieks and then adding a bassline, some acoustic guitar and then all harmonising with the anguished screams of the violated kitty kat. The Johnny Logan record is a billion million times worse.

It’s not kitsch. It’s not hilariously tacky. It’s not so bad it’s good. It’s just bad. Really, really fucking bad. There is no excuse to inflict Johnny Logan on us again. I mean, you wouldn’t like it if I dug up your dead mother and dressed her up in showgirls outfit and made a Flash animation of her dancing around to ‘Yes sir, I can boogie’ by Baccara, would you? Exactly. This is the same thing. Let sleeping dogs lie. Remember the film Logan’s Run where people got terminated when they were 30? If only that had been taken literally and all Logans had been put to sleep we wouldn’t have to put up with all this cockjockery now.

Personally, and I know the boys at TCAL won’t thank me for saying this, but I blame David Hasselhoff. He’s the ultimate example of things that are so naff they’re cool.

‘The Hoff this’ and ‘The Hoff that’. Fuck off. Look, David Hasselhoff is a fucking cunt, end of story. Knight Rider was fucking shite, Baywatch was even worse, he was a pop star in, yes, you’ve guessed it - Germany! - and he’s just making a living making a complete cunt of himself because it provides him with the attention and headlines he so desperately craves, the needy twat. If someone put a gun up his hole and blew his guts out through the top of his woolly head then I might actually be interested in him for a couple of minutes but until that glorious day he can go fuck himself.

There are films like that too. As most films are completely crap I’m finding it hard to think of examples but the one that springs to mind is Starship Troopers. You just know they were making a serious film until they realised it was a bag of shite and decided to ham it up to make it ’so bad it’s good’! Cunts. It was just so bad it was bad. All the money and special effects they had and the best they could come up with as the baddies were lots of giant spiders. There are drooling vegetables in hospices with more imagination.

Yet still people will say ‘Oh that was a great film. It was wonderfully bad’. No, 19, it was not. It was worse than falling asleep at a party and waking up to find someone sucking your dick only to find it’s your Dad with a mouthful of your own mickey. Worse. Than. That.

The ever increasing rise in things that are so bad they’re good is a terrible reflection on our society and our lack of creativity. We’ve just given up trying to make things so good they’re good and we’re taking the easy option. We need to stop it and stop it now.

Johnny Logan? Fuck off. Snakes on a plane? Cunts up a cunt, more like. Get fucked.

Phone calls

by Twenty Major on September 20th, 2006

Yesterday I had to make some phone calls. I hate making phone calls. Unless it’s ringing up famous people and making moose sounds at them. They hate that.

First I had to ring Eircom. What a bunch of cock that voice recognition system they have is.

“Please say your phone number”, he says.

“one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight”, I say (no smart arse comments, it’s just an example).

“Your number is ’seven - two - nine - six million - a hundred and six - twenty nine. Is that correct?”

“No”

“I’m sorry, please say your number again”

“one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight”, I say.

“Your number is ’seven - two - nine - six million - a hundred and six - twenty nine. Is that correct?”

“Arrrrrgh!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Would you like to activate your Eircom mail box?”

Seriously, it took me nearly 10 minutes going through none of the options which suited my call before I managed to speak to a real person. And then they were so fucking useless I pined for the machine.

Next up, NTL.

They make you key in your account number on the keypad, twice, then they say “The account number you entered is 12469474. Press the star key if this is correct”.

So you press the star key, end up in a queue for 10 minutes with some cunt telling me my call is important and then the first thing the girl does when you get through to her is ask you for your account number. What’s the fucking point of all that keying and pressing of star then? Pack of cunts. At least she was helpful. Well, helpful in the sense that she told me straight away she couldn’t help me. At least she didn’t leave me hanging.

After that it was the Vehicle registration office. I rang at 1pm.

“This is the vehicle registration office. I’m sorry but we’re closed for lunch between 12.45 and 2pm. Please call back later.”

Christ on a bike. When the fucking supermarkets are open until 11pm every night you’d think these fuckers would be able to man the phones during lunch hour. It’s all a bit 1970s, isn’t it? Lunch hour, I mean really. Do they all go at the same time? They need to sort that shit out. Given the influx of foreign workers here who’ll do anything for €1.50 an hour there’s just no excuse for closing for lunch.

When I did get through it was like a linguaphone tape as a woman with an almost incomprehensible accent gave me the information I needed. She’d say something. I’d repeat. She’d say it again. I’d repeat again and get close enough for her to move on. It was such a strange accent at the end I asked from which ex-Soviet state she came from.

“Tralee”, she said.

I fucking hate the phone.

Ryder cup bollocks

by Twenty Major on September 19th, 2006

So the Ryder Cup comes to Ireland and town is going to be full of golf tourists. You’ll know them by their brightly coloured Pringle jumpers and their plus fours.

Some people are renting their houses out for enormous sums of money. There isn’t enough money in the world to make me rent my home out to golf fans. Let’s not forget it was golf fans that invaded Poland in 1939 and sparked the second world war. And it was golf fans who massacred the athletes at the Munich olympics. And golf fans blew up the space shuttle. And if further proof was needed of their evil then think about how clean our noses would be if it wasn’t for the golf fans who invented bogeys.

The people who took the filthy lucre will find it’s not worth it. Their carpets, furniture, curtains and tupperware will all smell of golf when the short term tennants leave and even with what they’ve earned it won’t be enough to replace and fumigate everything.

To be perfectly honest with you they drive me mental. I wood prefer they all stayed at home. They could putt this country in real trouble. I’d round them up, slap them in irons and send them back from whence they came. It’s the only fair way.

In case people think I’m some bloke who has never played golf I did play once. First hole - 450 yards, wind in my face, bunkers galore, took out the driver, smack, put it two feet away from the hole. Simple putt for an eagle. Next hole, 198 yard par 3, 4 iron, straight in, hole in one. I shot a 59 at Portmarnock and never played again.

I need a game with a bit of a challenge. Like Yahtzee.

Rate my solicitor

by Twenty Major on September 18th, 2006

All this hoo-ha over ratemysolicitor.com is funny, isn’t it?

These chaps needs to get themselves some balls and a blog. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be accountable for their work the same as any blogger is accountable for what they write.

I write something here and there’s an open forum for people to agree or disagree, compliment or criticise, lavish praise or call me wicked names. It’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?

You have to be a bit thick skinned about it. Strikes me the solicitors are all mardy cunts at the best of times. The ones that don’t get millions from being involved in pointless tribunals have to deal with the ‘common man’ and they have grown bitter while their colleagues drag out these cases where high profile people pretend they can’t remember all the crooked shit they did.

I once had a solicitor who would never do what I told him. I was involved in a very bad car crash once so I sued the driver of the car who had no peripheral vision because he was Chinese and that was what made him go straight through the green light we had right of way on. I broke my arm so badly it took surgeons 9 months to fix it.

Now, surgeons are proper cunts at the best of times and if this one was a Hanna Barbera cartoon about a bunch of cunts in an alley who lived in bins he’d have been called Top Cunt.

He wrote medical reports, which cost £150 a pop (if I remember correctly), and he would say things like “He is fine”, “He has reasonable mobility in his arm”, “He complains of neck pain but it’s nothing really”.

6 months in a heavy cast does tend to cause problems and to this day I have issues with my shoulders and back. I would say to my solicitor “Look, this bloke is being a cunt. Can you please ask him to amend those reports to clear up the fact that I am not fine, I have a lot of neck pain and THAT I DON’T HAVE ANY MOBILITY AT ALL AS MY FUCKING HUMERUS IS STILL IN TWO PIECES LIKE A BROKEN FUCKING PENCIL!”

He would then write a letter, as if this cunt was some kind of God, kindly requesting him to change the reports, if he wouldn’t mind, because, if it wasn’t too much trouble *doff cap*, it would be good for our case, snivel snivel.

Useless cunt. In the end Jimmy the Bollix paid the surgeon a visit and procured a reasonable and truthful medical report. I did not want to exaggerate, just have him tell the truth. I often wonder who did the surgeon’s own medical report.

Rate my solicitor? He was absolutely rubbish.

An inconvenient truth

by Twenty Major on September 17th, 2006

If you haven’t heard about it it’s a film by Al Gore which spells out the dangers of our lifestyles and the damage we’re doing to the environment. Climate change is upon us and we’re guilty of making it happen.

I have to say this film had a profound and moving effect on me. More than any other film I’ve ever seen.

As soon as it was over I went out and bought the biggest, most uneconomical jeep I could buy. It does 50 yards to the gallon.

Yesterday was an absolute scorcher in Dublin. We need to do more to ensure days like that are the norm rather than the exception.

Global warming rules.

The pope versus Islam (live on Sky Sports this weekend!)

by Twenty Major on September 16th, 2006

We all know Muslims are crazy, reactionary lunatics but the Nazi pope really should know better than to wind them up saying the prophet Mohammed only brought ‘evil and inhuman’ things to the world.

In the current climate that’s tantamount to telling George W Bush you’ve got unlimited reserves of oil and suggesting you don’t like the quality programming provided by HBO thus making you an obvious enemy of American and ripe for an invading.

I don’t think the pope should apologise though. There’s only one way to settle a dispute like this.

Rubik’s cubes. Benny and a senior Muslim cleric should be given one each and the first one to finish wins. Don’t ask me to judge this situation though.

I’m not taking sides.

Update: “The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers who can now concentrate on killing each other because they’re not the right kind of Muslims, flying planes into tall buildings and blowing up trains”.

Genius

by Twenty Major on September 15th, 2006

Hats off to the lads at Langerland who have created a wonderful history of the Irish music scene. Click the image to view. The final performer is just classic.

Scary monsters

by Twenty Major on September 15th, 2006

“Twenty”, said Dirty Dave, “what giant sized animal would scare you the most?”

“You mean like a whale or bear or a megamonkey?”

“No. I mean a normal sized animal that perhaps had been exposed to some kind of radiation and grew to an enormous size in comic book style”.

“Hmmm, good question. Many people would think of a giant spider or a massive earwig but you said animal and spiders and earwigs aren’t animals as such. Something already ferocious, like a 16 foot tall lion or 500 kilo panther, would be particularly frightening”.

“Yeah, or imagine a canary with a 20 metre wingspan?!”

“Oooh, I do hate things with wings and anything that flaps at all is not a friend of mine. Even seeing a quadruple amputee trying to flip his way up the beach to avoid the tide makes my stomach turn over. What about your household pets though? What if Bastardface was 5 times his normal size?”

“Jaysus, stop it, would ya? That doesn’t bear thinking about. He’d be able to eat orphans four at a time”.

“Yeah, a scary thought. Your average house cat would be a terrifying vision too. I’ve watched Throatripper take out small falcons and Jack Russells and he’s only a kitten. An oversized version of him looming over you with his whiskas and postman flavoured breath would not be nice”.

“You can say that again. Puts me in mind of the 70s, if you know what I mean”.

“I certainly do, Dirty Dave. I certainly do. However, having mulled this over for some time now I can safely say that a giant rabbit would be the most frightening to me. Rabbits are cunts at the best of times. I had a friend once who had a rabbit in his back garden. He was called ‘Flopsy’ or ‘Cuddly’ or something like that but he would try and eat you. He growled like a rabid dog and he once bit the top of my mate’s finger off. In his temper he booted the rabbit over the wall and into next door’s garden where the rabbit raped the St Bernard that was in there before he burrowed his way back in under the wall.

A giant one of those would scare the shit out of me. Especially if it appeared in the cinema like in that film Donnie Darko that nobody knows what what it’s about. Bad enough being in the cinema but to have a giant rabbit sitting right behind you would be too much. So there’s my answer. What about yourself?”

“What do you call those creatures that eat their own young and make a mess everywhere and wallow in their own filth and have horns and a terrible smell?”

“Travellers?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Giant travellers. No thanks. Pint, Twenty?”

“Don’t mind if I do”.

Put some clothes on

by Twenty Major on September 14th, 2006

Was in town last night and there were kids in there celebrating their Junior Cert. As I walked to the bar I was going to (don’t tell Ron) I must have passed by 8 or 10 groups of young girls who couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15 years old.

Most of them were wearing skirts that you or I could use as belts, strapless tops, low cut tops, tops that just about covered their boobs but didn’t cover their bellies and there were even some in cocktail dresses.

Now, I’m no prude but this was just mental. For a start what kind of parent lets their child go out, into the city centre, looking like that? Now, I realise some of them went out in demure jeans and tops and changed over in Jacinta’s house but not all of them. Also, why don’t they get cold? It wasn’t especially chilly last night but I needed a jacket and if I’d gone round with a mini-mini skirt and a handkerchief to cover my nipples I’d have caught my death.

I certainly don’t remember 15 year olds dressing like that when I was a 15 year old. It was all shapeless baggy jumpers down to their knees and Doc Martens.

Fatmammycat wrote something yesterday about how the way a woman dresses can be perceived. I think she makes a good point but at the end of the day an adult woman makes her own choices and is responsible for her actions. If she wants to go out and get drunk wearing very little then that’s up to her.

However, 15 year olds slugging from cans of Dutch Gold before they go into a disco to drink from a naggin of vodka then come out and fall about the street looking for a bus or a taxi home is a bit much, if you ask me.

Personally I blame MTV, Girls Aloud and all the other geebags that pass for popstars these days. Life was simpler when the kids dressed like Siouxsie Sioux.

Hilarious!

by Twenty Major on September 13th, 2006

I went round to Stinking Pete’s last night to drop off some merchandise and got enthralled in a great film.

It was a laugh a minute comedy about a girl who wanted to be a boxer and the struggles she had. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman (who plays the wise black man role better than any other wise black man in the world) were the boxing coaches who had no faith in her to begin with but her crazy antics won them over.

She went on to be quite good at boxing, the crowd chanted her name in terrible Irish but then the slapstick really kicked in when she fell over in the ring and broke her neck on a rib-ticklingly misplaced stool (wooden, not poo).

So then we had a hospital comedy with redneck relatives, cranky nurses and all kinds of jokes about paralysis. I have to admit I cried when she bit off her own tongue. Cried with laughter!

Then at the end Clint Eastwood smothers her to death with a pillow. Comic genius.

I haven’t enjoyed a comedy as much since Schindler’s List. Million Dollar Baby is well worth a rental for those of you who want to leave behind the faux sincerity and schmalz of Hollywood and just have a good chuckle.