Let me do what I want, I’m not 6

by Twenty Major on October 13th, 2006

Ireland is a funny, interesting and at times annoying place to live. We’re modernising reasonably well. We have 24 hour shops, internet banking and some people even have internet that isn’t the equivalent of two tin can servers with a piece of string attaching them together.

However, when it comes to drinking we’re fucking backwards no matter what anyone might say. I was listening on the radio today about how they’ve modified the opening hours in Tralee. I was making a coddle so I wasn’t able to catch everything but I think what they’ve done is change closing time in clubs etc from 2.30am to 2am to see if that makes a difference.

They’re worried about all the public order offences and the fights that happen when people all stream out of nightclubs at the same time. As one astute commentator rang the station to say, the fights will now happen at 2am instead of 2.30am.

It’s the same problem in Dublin every weekend. There are buses, taxis and trams depositing thousands and thousands of people in the city centre every weekend night and only a limited number of night-buses and taxis to take people home. Far less than the amount needed to get everyone home.

Look, here’s the thing. If I want a Mars bar at 4am I can pretty much get one. I might have to go to a 24 hour garage or a shop somewhere but I know I can get it. I want a Mars bar. I go get a Mars bar.

Now, if I want a beer at 4am I’m fucked. I can’t get one anywhere. I should be able to have a beer whenever I want one. Also, I shouldn’t have to go to a pub if I want a beer. Beer should be available everywhere. I remember being astounded the first time I went to mainland Europe and I could have beer with my McDonalds, if I wanted.

In Europe you can get a beer in a bar, a restaurant, an ice-cream shop, a café - pretty much anywhere. The café licence thing was proposed not too long ago but Michael McDowell buckled under pressure from the vintners association who have far too much power. The other week I was in the city centre with a fine ankled friend and we went to a ‘Tapas bar’ and the lady said:

“Here, have a look at the menu!”

“No”, I said, “we just want to have something to drink.”

“Oh, that’s not possible. We only have a restaurant licence. You have to have food before we can serve you alcohol.”

Now, we could have sat down, ordered a cheap sandwich or a piece of bread and been served so why the fuck couldn’t we go into a nice place, sit at a nice table and just have a drink without having to have something to eat?

It’s fucking bullshit is what it is. There are too many powerful lobbies protecting their own interests ahead of the interests of the public.

Bars should be able to open 24 hours a day. Of course very few bars would open 24 hours but the late, late night bars and the early, early houses would emerge and everyone would be happy and an interesting new culture would emerge.

Pubs should not be the sole preserve of alcohol. Café licences are vital if this country is to progress and catch up with the rest of Europe where they have all this already and don’t suffer the same problems with alcohol as we do.

What happens every evening? People know they have a limited time to drink so they race through the pints and coming up to closing time they’ll order two or three rounds which they’ll lash down them then the minute they get outside into the air they get too drunk to be human and start fights or do stupid things like wander in the traffic and that’s why emergency rooms are overflowing.

They treat us like children and, to be fair, we act like children.

I want to have a beer sitting next to someone having a coffee who’s sitting next to someone having a salad plate and I don’t want to be in a pub. Sometimes I want to have a beer at 8am and sometimes I want a beer at 4am.

I want to do what the fuck I want and I don’t want some cunts deciding what they think is best for me when they don’t have a fucking clue. Fuck the vintners who have screwed us in cahoots with the government for years.

Fuck them all. I can get whatever I want at any time of the day or night apart from drink and who are those cunts to tell me I can’t have it?

Well?

Some bloggers are like JR Ewing

by Twenty Major on October 12th, 2006

Blogging is interesting stuff really. I know some people might write it off as something nerdy or geeky or dorky or stupid or lame or pathetic or unimportant but at the end of the day for most people it’s a hobby.

It’s certainly no worse than building model railways, stamp collecting, bird watching or trying to take close up pictures of Nelly Furtado’s minge.

The more you blog the more blogs you come across and you go back regularly to the ones you like. Maybe they link to cool stuff, they have good pictures, they make you laugh, they turn you on, you sympathise with them, you understand their point of view or their politics or they’re just a good storyteller. Whatever the reason you go back hoping they’ve posted something because you know you’re going to enjoy it. You might comment, they might comment on yours, little blog friendships are made. Sometimes they last, sometimes they’re like the warmth of wetting yourself on a cold day. A brief feeling of warmth which then becomes cold and uncomfortable far too quickly.

However, as you blog your way around blogland you come across people whose blogs you just don’t like. Maybe it’s their face, their opinions, their writing style, their zany profile, their lack of humour, their inability not to be a complete fucking cretin 100% of the time or just something you can’t place but whatever it is you dislike them.

And I know it’s juvenile and petty because you only know the person by their words on their blog (although some people are quite happy to spew out the minutiae of their life day after dreary fucking day) but you can’t help it. They’re under your skin and they’ll stay there.

And here’s the thing. If you saw a film you hated you’d never watch it again. The same with a book. You wouldn’t buy a record by an artist you didn’t like and you’d avoid buying a newspaper you didn’t like but blogging is a bit different.

Maybe it’s just me but I find myself drawn back every so often to read the bloggers I hate. I can’t help myself. I’m not sure if it’s some masochistic streak in me but I go back and I find they’re still total dicks and they make me angry and I click off and vow never to go back again. Perhaps I’m going back thinking that maybe I was wrong and they can’t be as objectionable as I think they are but they generally are.

Sometimes it takes a bit of willpower not to comment and say “YOU CUNT. I FUCKING HATE YOU EVEN THOUGH I KNOW IT’S STUPID AND I FEEL STUPID FOR EVEN CARING THIS MUCH ABOUT YOU TO HATE YOU BUT GOD FUCKING DAMN IT I REALLY DO!”

Not commenting is by far the best option but remember when Dallas was big and they used to say ‘Oh that JR Ewing, he’s the baddy everyone loves to hate!’

That’s what some bloggers are like. They’re my JRs. I can’t not read them. I can’t ignore them like I should. I love to hate them. I hate the fact I love to hate them and I’d be much better off if they all died (like I pray for sometimes when I read them) but I’m powerless to resist the hate. The dark side is strong.

Do you love to hate other bloggers? Do you?

Save the wasps.

by Twenty Major on October 11th, 2006

Sitting in Jimmy the Bollix’s kitchen the other night with Jimmy and Stinking Pete. Pete was washing out a mug so he could have tea.

Something went ‘Bzzzzzzzzzzzz’ past my ear. It was yellow and black and stripey. A wasp! I’m completely allergic to the pain of wasp stings. It landed on the window.

I picked up a magazine from the table (a copy of Digital Radio Enthusiast Monthly) and went to splat it. The only good wasp is a dead wasp.

“NO!”, roared Pete, “Don’t kill it. I hate people killing animals that we don’t eat. Even house flies and rogue ladybirds.”

“Fuck that, Pete. If that thing stings me you know the reaction could be terrible. I’d be going around the place going ‘Ow, that smarts. That is quite painful indeed. Ouch’ … and so forth. Are you prepared for that?”

“It won’t sting you, Twenty. I promise. I’ll sort it.”

So he picked up a glass and a sheet of paper. He put the glass over the wasp who was on the window then he put the paper underneath so he could kep him trapped then let him free outside.

Unfortunately it was quite a thick piece of paper so as he was sliding it under the glass he got a couple of the wasp’s legs trapped. Quickly moving it he solved the problem. The wasp’s legs were no longer trapped. They were no longer attached the wasp either.

“Oh shite!”, he said and moved the paper again this time shearing off another two legs and an antenna.

By now the wasp is seriously fucking pissed off as you would be if you’d lost four of your legs and an antenna thingy. It was buzzing like crazy. 50% in anger, 50% in terrible, buring pain.

“Fuck. Here, Twenty. Just hold this for a second”, he said.

I held it thinking he was going to get a different bit of paper. Instead he ran off going “Urrrrgh. Urrgggh.”

“Jesus Christ, Stinking Pete. He wouldn’t even have known what had hit him if I’d smacked him out of it. Now he’s trapped in a glass wondering why the wasp God has allowed such hideous injuries to happen to him and why he’s now a complete and utter capper. I’d say he’s buzzing so much in there because he’s hitting his head off the glass over and over to try and kill himself.”

I took the wasp and released him, by throwing the glass as far as I could into Jimmy’s back garden.

“Ooooh, urrrrgggh, urrrrgggh!”, said Pete.

I suppose I really should have known better than to listen to him in the first place.

Sieges

by Twenty Major on October 10th, 2006

So the bloke who barricaded himself into his house in Gort got shot in the end by the Gardai when he came out firing at them.

You have to think the Gardai have been very naive here. There was no need for him to come out at all. There are plenty of things they could have done to ensure a safe end to the drama.

What they should have done is put on Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast car’, recently shown to the be the world’s most boring song in extensive research carried out in Ron’s bar, and while that was on they could have read aloud from the Sunday Tribune, Ireland’s most boring Sunday newspaper.

Now, some of you might think that this kind of behaviour would enrage the man but you’d be quite wrong indeed.

Even if your goat was got to the max because of how much you hated the song and the newspaper the combination of both would render you so bored and listless than even if you felt like going out and shooting at policemen you just would not have the required gumption as all the gumption you had would have been drained from your body.

Eventually you would have lapsed into a coma and then Gardai could have gone into the house and peacefully shot you in the face while you lay unconscious.

A much safer way for the Gardai to go around shooting people. Who the fuck is doing their training, that’s what I want to know.

Truly they are visionaries

by Twenty Major on October 9th, 2006

I have been nominated for Best Blogger in the 2006 Net Visionary Awards. I’m up against some stiff competition, not least my ginger beared buddy Tom.

For those of you who can see beyond the swearing and the laughs (few and all as they are) and can appreciate my strategic vision in using blogging as part of the marketing mix then please go here and vote Twenty. Otherwise vote for Tom. I’m voting for Tom.

Irish football

by Twenty Major on October 9th, 2006

We were talking in Ron’s last night about Ireland and the shocking 5-2 defeat by Cyprus on Saturday.

“Fuck me”, said Jimmy the Bollix, “you could get 11 Dirty Dave’s, make them more handicapped and clumsy than he is already, and they’d have done better than that shower of shite.”

“That keeper was fatter than me”, said Stinking Pete.

“How in the name of all that’s holy did Kevin Kilbane make a career playing Premiership football?”, I asked. “I swear to God if I hadn’t discovered the joys of booze and beer and wine and whiskey and staying out all night drinking I could have played at that level. Fucking do-gooders wreck my head. If Kilbane can do it I certainly could have.”

“Yeah, you could score own goals at the highest level instead of Sunday league in the Phoenix Park!”

“Shut your hole, Jimmy.”

“And the manager, what the fuck is that about? He’s so far out of his depth he could be Jeff Buckley. Fucking hell, the red faced cunt has never managed a team in his life. What did they think was going to happen? I mean, you’d never hire a pilot who’d never flown a plane before or a surgeon who’d never been to medical school so why would you hire a football manager who’d never managed a football team? It’s stupid. The fans that spent money to go out there should get their money back from the FAI.”

“Fucking right they should. Let’s face it, they saved a shitload of money by not actually hiring a manager with experience and pedigree who knew what he was doing. There’s plenty in the coffers.”

“Fucking hell though. 5-2 to Cyprus? It’s insane. Still, the players we have are shite.”

“Scotland’s players are just as shite and they beat France!”

“I dunno then.”

Lucky Luciano laughed a little.

“What are you laughing at, Lucky?”, I asked.

“Is a crazy, you Irish. Italy, we are campioni del mondo but the players …pfff… all are a fucking shite.”

“What are you on about? Italy have quality players.”

“No. Is a big trick. You a see what happen with a Juventus? This happen all a the time. All Italian players are rubbish. You think a Kilbane is a bad. Is like a Pele in compare to Italian player. We just a give money to the other team to a make us look good.”

“That can’t be true. You’d need so much money and surely at least one team would say no.”

“Is a true, finance she a come from joint Mafia-Vatican venture. Is a two thing you don’t fuck with. The don and the a pope.”

“But what about the Italian league, when two Italian teams play each other?”

“The money is a only to make a the result but because players are so shit some is a more shit than others which make the less a shit one look good.”

“Fucking hell. So Ireland need to start paying opponents to make them look good.”

“Haha! Not even a Bertie have enough money for this.”

Anyway, the conclusion we came to is that if we lose the next match and Staunton isn’t sacked we should set the FAI headquarters on fire using John O’Shea as kindling.

Personally I think it’s all been downhill since Ashley Grimes retired.

So solid poo

by Twenty Major on October 8th, 2006

Due to my heavy intake of alcohol and Guinness my emissions are generally soft enough to pass without any trouble, bar a little burning from time to time.

However, I’ve obviously been eating something wrong because this morning my bowels created a monster poo that was as hard as marble and twice the size of my ringpiece. Thank God I had the culture section of last week’s Sunday Times to keep my mind off it. The fact that Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antionette was far preferable to the pushing and clenching I had to endure to expel this beast should tell its own story.

I feel violated.

Isn’t it…?

by Twenty Major on October 7th, 2006

This morning I was eating a jam doughnut and I got jam on my pyjama bottoms.

I immediately phoned Alanis Morisette in case she wanted to add another verse to her song ‘Ironic’.

Blogging the erection

by Twenty Major on October 6th, 2006

Don’t forget, if you’ve got nothing better to do tomorrow why not go to the Blogging the Erection conference?

They’ll have talks from Republic upholder of family values, Mark Foley, former Tory MP Cecil Parkinson while ex-US President Bill ‘Cigar Clit’ Clinton will be the keynote speaker explaining just how important erections are in politics and what blogging can do to improve erections amongst the common people.

Be there or be limp.

Sadly I can’t make it.

More on Aer Fungus

by Twenty Major on October 6th, 2006

haha, this Aer Lingus thing is priceless.

Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, was on the TV saying nobody could have predicted that Ryanair would try and make a bid for the company. Are they not embarrassed to go on TV and say things like that?

It would be like a company inventing the most delicious pie in the world then saying “My goodness, we certainly didn’t expect all those fat people to buy the pies”.

Then you have SIPTU urging the government to buy shares to stop Ryanair gaining control. What a bunch of moronic cunts they are.

They want the government, who has made close to €350m on its 28% holding in Aer Lingus since the launch, to spend money so that they can stop a bloke they hate taking over. They want the government to ignore the people on hospital waiting lists, kids who go to school in portacabins, the elderly and all the other things they could and should spend money on so they can prevent perfectly legitimate business taking place.

They have clearly lost what little remained of their tiny little minds. While they may have taken great delight in having the government over a barrel time and time again they know that they’re never going to be able to do that to O’Leary and they’re fucking shitting it. Good enough for them too.

The objectors are only objecting because it’s Michael O’Leary. If it was some group of German financiers there wouldn’t be half the fuss there is but one of the few Irish international successes in business wants to take over and it’s like Hitler and Satan taking turns doing your mum up the arse.

No doubt we’ll hear more bleating from SIPTU and from Aer Lingus employees over the next few days despite the fact Aer Lingus rejected the take over.

No matter how much they go on money talks much louder and we’ll see who’s voice we hear at the end.