I was standing chatting to a chap before Christmas as we were in town enjoying some festive pints and he was standing on Townsend Street, opposite the back passage into Pearse Street Garda station, smoking a big, fat joint and we were talking about football.
He casually mentioned some statistic that would see Manchester United (boo) win more titles than Liverpool (boo) by 2010. Naturally I couldn’t give a fish’s tit about that but talking about 2010 made me think ‘Fucking hell, 2010?’.
“2010″, I said, “for fuck’s sake.”
“What?”, he said.
“Well, if you’d asked me about 2010 back in the 80s I’d have envisaged a much more futuristic Dublin. But it’s just the fucking same, isn’t it? Where are the funky Bladerunner style skyscrapers? Where are the robots, the spaceships and airborne cars like in the 5th Element? Yes, we have a tram that about 3% of the city can use and a big spike on O’Connell Street but that’s about it. It’s all tremendously disappointing when you stop and think about it.”
“It is that”, he said as a number 10 bus went past, “although you have to admit the buses are much more modern than they were.”
And he was right. Despite all creativity and imagination the best we’ve managed to come up are shinier and more aerodynamic buses. What a load of old bollocks.
Perhaps one of my New Year’s resolutions should be to invent something that would make life more futuristic, even if we are living in the present. Sadly I’m not much of an inventor, what with being far too lazy and crap to actually do any of the workshop stuff. Oh, I’ve got the ideas, my brain is full of them, but I’m no good with lathes and planes and other assorted tools. I am a man of words. I cannot carpent, I cannot DIY, I do not plumb, electricify or mechanicise. Those are people I employ when I need them.
Anyway, New Year’s resolutions are stupid. I made 6 of them last year and didn’t keep any of them. I gave some of them to starving children in Africa though so I don’t feel too bad.
you cannot caprent! now you tell us?
So has anyone got any topical jokes yet? Something to the effect of: What do you call 50 Kenyans in a church surrounded by a machete-wielding mob? That sort of thing.
Kenyan people disgust me.
That guy with the spliff has the right idea…. 2010 will be a space odyssey regardless if he keeps going the way he’s going… that’s my plan anyway. Happy New Year to you.
My Da used to take me on the tram to Howth around 1959,tram, hardly Star Trek.
On the other hand we have Mahon ?
I have to think that Alan never really fulfilled his potential as a player…
Let’s just paint everything silver.
what, even the luas?
The luas already is silver you spazzer.
The windows are not silver yet.
There you go. As a token gesture, I’ve changed my name. Already I feel all kinda fururistic.
fururistic = futuristic
chill out Johnny 5..have a cigarette.
This is like one of those shite essays for leaving cert English that I had “The world does not change, it merely progresses” which really can wreck your head! Having seen some of the ‘reeling in the years’ over Xmas, I thought that in Ireland of the 1980′s (a) everyone was sooo white; (b) we all dressed like shit; and (c) we even looked poor when we were probably ‘middle class’. Now posh people look orange from fake tan (even the women); we’re all dressed like shit only it costs a fortune to do so, and the crustie look is middle-class.
But just to support the idea that things don’t change, here’s a lovely 1950′s advert (with Betty White) which reminds me of the Cillit Bang adverts of today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2s0qE4Quqc
Here ya go Twenty – this will set you up after the Holiday excesses- Badger Casserole!
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2233976,00.html
I made a resolution X years ago and I haven’t broken it yet and that was never to make any. Resolutions is fer cunts and bible bashers!
And for people who design TVs Groucho.
Doooowwwwwwwwwwnnnn with work.
Come on now, people now, did nobody kiss some hideously ugly woman in a side-splitting tale of awesome hilarity and selfless self-ridicule this Christmas?
I know this guy who has a harem of decent (personalities) but gruesome women that he… you know.. and they all know about each other and somehow they are totally cool with that, which is the nuts, if ugly chicks are your thing. I also know a guy who kissed a girl with Down Syndrome. Okay that’s a lie, but someone somewhere must have done that, the sick bastard!
eh?
you didn’t make it.
sorry.
Maybe next year when my citizenship comes through.
mobile phones and computers are the only change really i suppose.
my new years resolution is to not become a mormon.
although I don’t do resolutions.
Mormontastic.
Guys, we cant just sit here and expect some one else to futurize the world for us. We need to start on a grass roots level, effect change from the bottom etc.
Basically, im saying we need to start wearing silver one-piece jumpsuits.
There are more futuristic cunts around..
Of course there has been change, especially in cell phones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIOIM6hHBk
hah, cool phone
Basically, im saying we need to start wearing silver one-piece jumpsuits.
And hah again
Happy New year Twenty, and the rest of you. Hope 2008 is the year where it all starts to make sense…..
Anyone got any good endings to the sentence:
”By this time next year……..”
I say Musharef dead, and India drops the bomb. But i’m an optimist.