Just make enough, you cunts.

by Twenty Major on November 20th, 2006

I’ve been reading over the weekend about people going mental to get their hands on a Playstation 3. There have been such queues and shenannigans that the Mayor of Boston has actually billed Sony to pay for the extra police needed when people rioted outside one shop at 5am.

Then there were stories about people queuing for ages to get themselves a Nintendo Wii. They camped out for days. I didn’t read of any riots but all the same having to live outdoors just to get the chance to buy a video games console is mental.

When you think about it it really shouldn’t be necessary. We’re talking about two massive companies here. Sony and Nintendo are not Mickey’s video game thing Ltd operating out of a converted garage in Inchicore.

Why couldn’t they just make more of them? I know there’s a certain element of hype about the whole thing and they want to create some kind of excitement but there’s enough excitement already without having to pit man against his fellow man in the race to be first in the door to buy one. It just doesn’t make sense to me. If you have created the hype already wouldn’t it be better to have loads of the fucking things to sell which means you make more money?

What good is it if you have queues of 500 people but only 200 of them can buy a PS3? It’s not like the labour costs are massive in the far east either. Just get a load of orphans and stick them in factory making the machines for 18 hours a day. Some might say it’s cruel and child labour is not right but it keeps them off the streets and lets them earn money they’d only steal from somewhere anyway.

Honestly, imagine how much more money they would have made this weekend if they’d had enough machines to go around. For all their hi-tech wizardry the nips don’t know too much about supply and demand, do they?

Technorati Tags: ps3, nintendo wii

Net visionaries

by Twenty Major on November 17th, 2006

Many thanks to the people at the Irish Internet Association who awarded me with the Best Blogger award at last night’s Net Visionary Awards. Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the public vote and thanks to the judges whose names, I promise you, I didn’t know and was therefore unable to menace in their own homes to ensure they voted correctly.

The competition was very stiff with me up against ginger podcasting legend Tom Raftery and hosting overlord Michele Neylon.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the event but Tom very kindly accepted the award on my behalf and, I’m sure, read the acceptance speech which you can now read below.

Thanks again.

===========

Dear Net Visionary folk,

I am sorry I couldn’t be there with you this evening but sadly I have a very important mission to undertake. If it goes badly you’ll be reading about it in tomorrow’s newspapers. If not then you’ll be none the wiser and that’s probably best for all of us.

Many people struggled to see how my blog fitted in with the rest of the nominations. Not you though. You, because you have such vision, understood that beneath the stories of booze, violence, casual drug consumption, bodily functions and 80s pop music lay a contemporary, relevant and strategic look at modern Ireland, the business and technological world and how it impacts on our every day life.

You saw past the expletives, cursing and ranting and realised that they were fueled by the frustration and dissatisfaction of a fellow visionary. A man in modern Ireland striving to make a difference, struggling against the machinations of a divided society. Divided into those who have the vision and those, like Stevie Wonder and Bertie Ahern, who don’t.

I am very proud that we share the same vision. Maybe you don’t even realise our vision is the same but it is. We are visionaries. Net visionaries.

I would also like to congratulate Tom Raftery and Michele Neylon for their nominations and if I have been lucky enough to win it makes me feel even better about myself to have beaten them. Not because I take pleasure in it but because they are totally awesome which must mean I’m even awesomer than they are.

I thank Tom for collecting this award on my behalf and if any of you ever find yourself in Ron’s I’ll buy you a pint and do my utmost to keep you safe.

cheers,

Twenty

Beware the pub of death

by Twenty Major on November 17th, 2006

“Jaysus”, said Jimmy the Bollix, “I was just talking to old Rory Hooper. Remember him, Twenty?”

“Is he the fella whose brother went around cutting the hind legs off donkeys?”

“Aye, that’s the lad. Anyway, he drinks around the corner in the ****** ****.”

“Not a bad little boozer.”

“What was that?”, said Ron.

“Nothing, nothing. Go on, Jimmy.”

“Anyway, he says that the regulars there have been dropping like flies in the last 12 months or so. At least 9 of them have died and the wives of another 8 of them have kicked the bucket since this time last year.”

“Is that unusual though? We are all of an age, you know.”

“Well, according to the death statistics from previous years it’s an increase of 345%. That’s what you call a substantial increase, Twenty, but listen to this. Remember Jack O’Leary?”

“Was he the lad who used to wear a patch on his eye and throw handfuls of his man custard at the girls after school?”

“The very same. Well, Jack’s son had a baby a while ago and they had the christening the Saturday before last. At the christening Jack’s sister dopped dead in the church. Then at the wake after her funeral didn’t his brother go to the bar, order a round, then collapse. Massive heart attack.”

“Poor cunt.”

“Yeah, but then Jack’s wife, he married Betty Boyce, remember her?”

“Was she the one who everyone said had three nipples and one of the nipples was a big hairy nipple?”

“Exactly, well she’s been sick for a while and Jack went up to bring her a slice of toast and a cup of tea for her breakfast yesterday morning, they have separate rooms now of course, and there she was. As stiff as a judge’s cock in a room full of schoolchildren.”

“Fucking hell. That’s what you call a rough couple of weeks.”

“It is that and if any proof were need that the ****** **** was cursed then there it is.”

“It’s hard to argue with it.”

“Aye.”

*flip beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep*

“Howya Stinking Pete! Jimmy here. Fancy a pint later? Grand. No, Ron’s closed the place down. Has to have it fumigated after what Dirty Dave did last night. Yeah, I know. Filthy cunt. Anyway, we’ll be in the ****** ****. Around 8. See you there.”

A metro is the only way forward

by Twenty Major on November 16th, 2006

So the government is set to buy out National Toll Roads’ interest in the M50 toll bridge according to reports yesterday. Good news on the surface but in reality little more than bollocky electioneering as it won’t happen until 2008 and by that stage someone, surely, will have gone Michael Douglass on the whole thing.

As it is the traffic is sheer lunacy. I was listening to the radio yesterday and they were saying that the traffic in Dublin is so bad that international companies are thinking twice about setting up here.

Now, add the new port tunnel to the mix. That’s opening next month and it will be bringing thousands and thousands of heavy goods vehicles straight from the port onto the M50 motorway where they can add to the already monstrous queues and tailbacks. Perhaps traffic might clear up slightly around town because of this but really it’s like having a vicious dog and moving him from one garden full of children to another.

The government will pay something in the region of €600m to buy out NTR as their contract runs until 2020. They then want to introduce barrier free tolling which will allow the traffic to move more freely and you know where they can stick barrier free tolling? Exactly.

Not because I would be opposed to tolls if you knew the money you were paying was being put back into improving transport in the city but because that is exactly what won’t happen.

The problem as I see it, and I may be over-simplifying things here, is that almost 100% of Dublin traffic is overground. Cars, trucks, vans, trains, trams (that cause traffic delays as they pass through busy junctions) etc all overground.

The solution, which again I may be over-simplifying, is to move traffic (and by traffic I mean people) underground. A metro to the airport is fine, I suppose, but it’s really only serving a very limited number of people.

Imagine if you live in Tallaght and you have to go to Santry every day. That’s hours of your time spent on the M50. Now, imagine you could get a metro into town and pick up another metro out to Santry. There’s just no way you’d take your car if the public transport was good enough. And that’s what the traffic jams all over Dublin, not just the M50, indicate - public transport is fucking shite. People have no alternative but to take their car and add to the problem.

Adding more overground traffic will not alleviate the problems. Taking possibly hundreds of thousands of people off the streets and transporting them underground will do a huge amount.

Perhaps the costs are prohibitive and given the port tunnel problems we’re obviously a bit fucking crap at building these kinds of things but there is expertise available wherever you want to look. Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, London - all with underground systems, knowledge of running and maintaining them and probably a few tips on how to get them built (they’ll have learned from parts of their cities falling down as they tunneled).

In European cities around the world they’re adding to and expanding their existing underground systems. In Ireland we’re going to get one line out to the airport which will benefit a small percentage of the people.

As the greater Dublin area spreads like a cold sore on the face of this country (people commute from miles and miles outside the city now) we’re going to end up in a situation, if we’re not there already, where it becomes almost impossible to get around at peak times. Naturally they’ll try and ’solve’ it through things like the London congestion charge but that’s not a solution it’s just a money maker.

Here’s what they should do. Keep the toll on the M50, make it barrier free as soon as possible, take all the money they’re going to fleece from people when they introduce speed cameras and invest, long term, it in a transport system that will make a difference instead of trying to find short terms solutions because there aren’t any.

Any candidate who got seriously behind a metro for Dublin would have my vote. Unless he was Conor Lenihan, the massive twat.

An eye for an eye

by Twenty Major on November 15th, 2006

I call for an attack on Omar Bakri Mohammed. If you see him hit him hard and fast, the beardy cunt.

Mmmmm, tasty

by Twenty Major on November 15th, 2006

One of the neighbours called to the door yesterday.

*knock knock*

“Hello”, he said.

“How do you do?”, I said.

“Not so well”, he said.

“Why’s that?”, I said.

“Well, your cat has been in my garden.”

“You know what cats are like. They like to roam wild and free so as the old saying goes let your kittens roam wild and free.”

“Er, yes. That’s all very good except I had a pond full of Koi carp.”

“I see.”

“The thing is now I have a pond full of fish skeletons like you used to see in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.”

“Ahhh. Sorry about that but cats will be cats.”

“I also had a rabbit which belonged to my 7 year old daughter. She went out to feed it this morning and saw your cat devouring its gizzards and entrails. She hasn’t spoken since and is now sitting in the corner of the room rocking gently to herself and drooling slightly out of the side of her mouth.”

“Awww, the poor thing. I know a man who knows a man. I’ll get her a new rabbit but you may need to improve your hutch security.”

“Yeah…well, we also had a African grey parrot which could speak whole sentences. We spent three years training it. We had videos up on YouTube and everything. Word was we were going to get a guest spot on the Ryan Tubridy show because he specialises in quality programming like that.”

“And?”

“My wife came down the stairs just in time to see your cat spit out the beak after he’d managed to pull apart the bars of the cage we kept him in. She’s traumatised. She loved that bird.”

“That cat is a rascal all right.”

“And then there’s our dog.”

“You have a dog?”

“We had a dog. As I was bringing out the bin containing the remains of Aubrey the parrot and the fish skeletons I noticed in the front garden the left back leg of our Boston Terrier, a pile of blood and your cat sitting on the wall with a massively engorged stomach licking its chops like a fellow that’s just eaten an enormous rack of BBQ spare ribs.”

“That lovable rogue Throatripper. What antics will he get up to next?”

“It’s not good enough”, he said. “Our family has been devastated and decimated and digested.”

“I can see where you’re coming from, to be fair. Do you have any other pets?”

“No! They’ve all been eaten.”

“Grand, then you have nothing else to worry about. Good day to you, sir.”

*slam*

Cheerio Curtin, you cunt

by Twenty Major on November 14th, 2006

So Brian Curtin resigned yesterday after an attempt to have him declared unfit for participation in the inquiry into the child porn images found on his computer was rejected.

Coincidentally this came about just days after he’d passed the five year mark in his term as a judge and is therefore eligible for a pension.

For those that don’t know the story Judge Brian Curtin was arrested in 2002 after child pornography was found on his computer. He got away without criminal charges because the warrant served was a day out of date.

Now that he’s resigned the committee set up to investigate has had to be adjourned so he will not face any further investigation.

In the newspapers today they mention that Curtin’s defence team would suggest that the judge’s computer had been infected by ‘trojan horse’ viruses which is really quite laughable.

While I suppose it is possible for somebody to write a virus that would download and store images of child pornography on someone’s computer it’s about as likely as Bertie not being a stuttering cunt or Blogorrah going a week without publishing a picture of that horse-faced minger Glenda Gilson.

Curtin’s solictor said yesterday “He wishes to leave it at that as he has reached such a stage of ill-health that he cannot continue the fight and so has brought the matter to an end. He wishes simply to be left alone to live out such further time as God will allow him in peace and quiet.”

So he’s happy to bring it to an end once he becomes eligible for his pension and his ridiculous defence won’t have a chance to be taken apart by anyone who knows anything about computers. How convenient.

I hope the cunt dies roaring.

Things you can do…

by Twenty Major on November 13th, 2006

…while waiting for a plane.

- Read a book, magazine or newspaper
- Listen to music
- Use the internet at one of the pay as you go computers
- Do some shopping
- Have a meal
- Play video games

Things you shouldn’t do:

- Get absolutely shitfaced drunk then argue with the check-in lady who says you’re too drunk to get on the plane then get arrested and taken to a police station to ’sleep it off’.

Just saying, like…

Stupid sign

by Twenty Major on November 11th, 2006

On Dame Street yesterday I saw a café which claimed its products were ‘outrageously fresh’. What the fuck does that mean?

How can freshness be outrageous? Storming into Dail Eireann, pulling down your pants, pooing in your hand and then smearing it all over the faces of the government is, while also heroic, probably quite outrageous. Having some crispy lettuce is not.

It’s like a saying something is ‘refreshingly dead’ or ‘enthusiastically tasty’. Stupid.

Almost as stupid as those people who have to seek approval on their own blogs for every little thing they do to make themselves feel alive. Get real.

You lot are fucking crap

by Twenty Major on November 10th, 2006

Some blokes tried to rob a post office by kidnapping the post-mistress and holding her husband and grown up son hostage. Off they went, down the M50, to rob the cash and their van broke down meaning the feckless crims had to leg it.

A couple of days earlier a post-mistress over in North Strand managed to escape when one of the morons fell asleep. How fucking crap is that? Imagine the adrenaline, the tension, the energy that doing a robbery must create and this dick managed to nod off. And they say heroin is no good for society.

That lady can thank her lucky stars that yer man was filled up with the golden brown, texture like sun (and if Gordon Brown ever takes over as Labour party leader in the UK he just has to use that as his theme tune - Gordon Brown, finer temptress. Actually, scratch that).

These kids today have no idea how to carry out a robbery. It’s not too difficult to make sure you have a car that isn’t a piece of shit and if you’re going to hold somebody hostage try not to get so fucked up that you pass out.

It’s no wonder that Dublin criminals are the laughing stock of the country. They’re even laughing at them in Offaly. How sad is that?