The dumbing down and down of Newstalk

by Twenty Major on April 16th, 2008

Found this story via Mulley.

Basically a Newstalk reporter brought in three knives to a pyschiatric day hospital. This was to see if security had been beefed up after a man attacked two staff there in January. It was part of the Eamon Keane show, which is no surprise.

This is a lunchtime program which purports to deal with serious issues in five minute soundbites. It generally goes something like ‘Interview - Keane asks needlessly antagonistic question to somebody - calls that person by their name “So, tell me Albert Reynolds / Albert Reynolds, can I ask you …” - feigns some kind of moral outrage - spends subsequent 10 minutes reading out 30c a minute texts from witless listeners’.

Then you have Brenda Power in the mornings. ‘Your call’ is the name of the show and she says ‘Mmmmm’ a lot when people are talking about tries to phone up people who have treated people badly. I stopped listening to that show a while back while she was on her HSE/Mary Harney crusade. I think we all know the HSE is a mess and Harney has done a shite job but having to listen to Brenda Power ring up every day and sound disgusted that she couldn’t get through to the Minister was fucking pathetic.

Years ago in the one of the tabloids there was a column called ‘Captain Cash’, or similar. People would write in with their stories of woe and if the Captain decided it was woeful enough then he’d give them a few bob. ‘Your call’ is like Captain Cash but without the cash. Or the Captain. It’s fucking embarrassing listening to her take up the so-called fight for some person nobody really gives a fuck about.

Now this thing they have where the presenter of the next show comes along to tell the listeners what’s coming up. Haha, you have to laugh. It’s pure 1980s Radio Dublin that.

“So what’s de story witch yor show, Anto?”

“It’s gonna be deadly, Micko. Loads a great choons and don’t forget you can ring for a request an’ all an anyways!”

George Hook used to be interesting, a combative kind of personality he’d argue with people and it was entertaining. Now George only argues about rugby and wants to be everyone else’s friend. Is that down to George becoming a nicer person and seeing the error of his ways or down to station rules? I prefer arguments, I prefer presenters with opinions, not cuddly sponsor friendly radio like we get now.

The kind of stunt they pulled with the knives is the kind of thing The Sun or the News of the World do. It’s tacky, tabloid shite. How long before they get themselves a fake Sheikh to entrap people in hotel room interviews? Staff at St Anne’s in Limerick, where this crap took place, are said to be ‘outraged’, and rightly so. It was stupid and irresponsible and proved what exactly? Only that it’s easy to take a knife into a hospital, which is probably true of every hospital in Ireland. Because they’re hospitals, not prisons, airplanes or any other kind of high security complex.

I know the station is losing money hand over fist and they have to try something but making Ireland’s first tabloid radio station is not something to be proud of.

I’ll turn back on for the sports show in the evening (turning off when the tedious cunt that is Ken Earley is talking) but for the rest of the day I’ll listen to something else. Like static.

Equality

by Twenty Major on April 15th, 2008

I was sitting in Ron’s when my phone rang.

*bring bring*

“Hello?”

“Hello, Twenty Major?”

“Yes. Who is this and how did you get this number and where do you live so I can kill you?”

“This is Adrian Pennyfeather and I’m calling you from the newly formed BEA?”

“You mean the DEA?”

“No, the BEA. The Blog Equality Agency.”

“What’s that then?”

“It’s an agency that deals with equality in blogs.”

“I see.”

“Now, I have to be honest and advise you that yours is the first blog we have contacted due to numerous complaints about the lack of equality on it.”

“What do you mean ‘lack of equality’? I’m quite equalariffic if you look at it. I hold no truck with racism or discrimination. I see beyond colour, political affiliation and things like that. I hate everyone equally.”

“That’s as a maybe but the fact is we have received far too many communications from readers to ignore the obvious problems.”

“What problems?”

“Well, in this modern Ireland we all share, there are people concerned that there are no black characters in your blog.”

“That’s because I don’t have any black friends who drink in my bar and who I grew up with.”

“That’s probably because you don’t want any. And even though a large percentage of the population is Polish you don’t have any Polish characters, not even a shoe-shine. It’s blatant discrimination towards a large sub-section of the population. Polish people can be funny too. Just the other day one told me a joke. ‘What do you call a Lithuanian with half a brain?’. ‘Gifted’. Hahaha. Isn’t that just priceless?”

“It is if you’re Frank fucking Carson.”

“So no Poles, no blacks. No Chinese…”

“Ah-ah. Wait a minute. I do have a Chinese friend. I wrote about him before.”

“Just the once, eh? Hardly a ringing endorsement of Ireland’s most casino-going immigrants, is it? So no Poles, no blacks, no other eastern-Europeans bar slagging off gyspies, WHICH IS RACIST YOU KNOW, but the most shocking omission of all is the complete and utter lack of women in Ron’s bar.”

“Women don’t really like Ron’s bar. It smells funny, mostly because of Dirty Dave and Stinking Pete, but also because of all the blood on the carpets and Ron’s insistence on burning incense sticks made from dried orphan skin.”

“There are no gays or lesbians either. Or bisexuals. Didn’t you live through the 90s? Didn’t you see how clubbing and taking E made so many, many people realise they preferred to do their gardening uphill? How can you blatantly ignore them?”

“Stinking Pete once sucked a tramp’s cock for a bet, does that count? And I’m a lesbian.”

“Very funny. What about country people? You’re too insular. Country people are everywhere these days. Not just on farms or in civil service offices. You need to highlight the positive effect they have on our community. And religions. You slag off the catholic church yet you leave the rest of them alone. You must be representative of the Protestants, Muslims, Jews, MegaJews and Buddhists.”

“And the mentally retarded. Where is their voice in your blog?”

“Er, Dirty Dave and Stinking Pete…”

“Oh, fair enough. The deaf lobby have been on to me as well, saying ‘Num mummmmh numm nummh num nmmm, num ni numm numm numm.’”

“That’s a fair point. But, you know, can’t I just write about what I want to write about? It’s my blog after all.”

“You can make all the excuses you like but we have powers vested in us by the Blogosphere and unless you introduce some minority characters in your blog then we’ll have no choice but to prosecute you to the full extent of the law. We can shut you down quicker than a Tribunal can fuck up a Taoiseach. You have seven days or you will feel our wrath. Good day to you sir. I said ‘good day’.”

*click click*

Just then in walked Floella Bergstein, the post-op transexual gay Jewish black deaf woman with her half-Polish, half-Chinese protestant lesbian husband.

I left of course, I hate those cunts.

How to go to jail in Ireland

by Twenty Major on April 14th, 2008

Read this and tell me because I can’t figure it out.

Ban on junk food avertising

by Twenty Major on April 14th, 2008

More genius from the Greens as Minister for Communications wants a ban on junk food advertising on children’s television.

So like scenes where ladies get their boobs out and men’s arses go up and down they may only be shown after 9pm in the evening. The ‘watershed’ will protect us all from evil things like sex and burgers.

But really, fuck off. Seriously. Of all the things in this country that warrant our attention a ban on ‘junk food’ ads is about the least of them. And frankly it won’t do the slightest bit of good. Parents will still buy junk food for themselves and their children, they will grow large with this kind of food and they will develop the same related problems like weak joints (ankles and knees, not rizla), diabetes and chronic flatulence.

It’s because people are inherently lazy, you see. Throw some Birds Eye in the oven and off you go. It might be better to actually tell people what’s in the food they’re eating. Someone once told me that Birds Eye chicken breasts are actually all the carcasses compressed and then re-coloured to make them look like chicken. That may or may not be true but if you eat Birds Eye chicken breast then maybe you should do some research.

Children like sweet things and salty things. They don’t tend to like savoury things, mostly because their palettes haven’t developed yet. And fat people like fatty foods. Do they really think banning Burger King ads is going to stop families going and getting Triple Whopper meals and the like? My hoop it will.

Was it a Stephen King short story where the bloke went to this company to help him stop smoking? They had him check in and do weigh-ins and they knew if he’d smoked and one time when he got a bit overweight they brought in his wife and mentally retarded son and put them on a metal plate and made them dance like KFC chickens by electrocuting them.

If the Greens are really serious about the health of our nation, and our youngsters, that’s what they’ll do. Set out guidelines about weight and height and all that and any kid that is too fat gets electrocuted for a little bit. A bit of positive reinforcement, they call it. Even better, zap the parents. They’d soon be careful about what they fed their little hippos if they were the ones subjected to 200 volts on their genitals.

Well, when the ban on junk food advertising has absolutely no effect on things what are they going to try?

Sign that the world is coming to an end - part 54

by Twenty Major on April 12th, 2008

You know we’re reaching the end of days when there’s a Rick Astley ‘flashmob’.

Flashmobs themselves are tedious shite but Rick Astley mixed up with it makes it even more so. I really do have a problem with these ironic lauding of things that are crap.

“Oh, it’s so cheesey and shit it’s sooooooooooo funny.”

Fuck off you cunts. It’s not. It’s just shit.

Never gonna give you up, but give me half a chance and I’ll give you good dose of syphilis infected thalidomide.

Fuck you and your VRT

by Twenty Major on April 11th, 2008

You know I strongly object to these new car tax rules. Why should I pay more for a car that has more emissions when the cunting government fly from Dublin to Belfast, which causes more damage to whatever cunting layer we’re supposed to be protecting than driving around all year long?

Fucking poxy Green party bastards. All they’ve done is bend over, take it up the arse from Bertie then rape us back with taxes we don’t fucking need.

I hope they all die.

Mongrels

by Twenty Major on April 11th, 2008

“You know”, said Stinking Pete, “I remember my father saying something to me once and it stuck with me all these years.”

“What was that - ‘You’re a smelly cunt, get out of my house’?”

“Haha, Jimmy. No. It was around the time of Live Aid and he was watching news reports of the famines in Ethiopia and Southern Italy. Says he ‘Famine victims are like old mongrels’.”

“You what?”

“He reckoned they were the same as old mongrels”.

“Yeah, I heard that bit, but why?”

“Well, his theory was that if you were eating a steak and you got a chewy bit both of them would eat the bit you spat out”.

“Jesus Christ.”

“He also reckoned Mary Harney would do the same but she’d be a bit more sly about it. Like you’d spit it into a napkin and then when the table was being cleared she’d pretend to help and then scoff it down like a big, hungry famine mongrel. You know, perhaps a good way of solving the health service crisis would be to put diseases and hugely dangerous hospital infections inside large amounts of cake then get Mary Harney to come along and inspect the hospital and when people’s backs were turned she’d eat all the cake and the infection that killed 15 people in a month because the hospital lacked basic hygiene facilities would be gone and let’s face it, nothing could survive Mary Harney’s stomach acid.”

“Go back to talking about mongrels again, would you? I’m in no fucking mood to talk about Mary Harney”.

“Ok. I once had a three legged mongrel. I called him Stumpy Golightly. He had brain damage and he once ate a big pile of some other dog’s shit then sicked it up in the middle of my bed, ate it up again and revomited it in the corner of the room. I didn’t notice for three days. Man, that was some smell, let me tell you.”

“I’ll be back in a minute, I’m just going to kill myself…”

“Ok. I love mongrels.”

It needs to be seen

by Twenty Major on April 10th, 2008

Don’t normally do links but this needs as wide an audience as possible.

Una on Hot Press and a Limerick rapper - check out the retarded Bebo page. It’s fucking hilarious. A small sample:

Happiest When - when i hav lots of people with me taking over other people territorys around ireland with our fists

Scared of - rats and snakes and women

Music - johnny cash kenny rogers amy winehouse bullitz everyone in stab city records i forgot tupac how could anyone forget him

haha, Limerick rapper in Kenny Rogers collection scandal.

Go check out the rest. It’s just too fucking funny for words.

Now that’s what I call an excuse

by Twenty Major on April 10th, 2008

A man was found not guilty of murdering his uncle through reasons of insanity yesterday.

Anyway, he apparently had a text book case of schizophrenia and the reason he smashed his uncles head in twenty times with an axe was because Jimi Hendrix told him his uncle was the devil. Awesome. Then it seems his uncle told him he wanted to die because boxer Jack Dempsey was speaking to him through his uncle’s mouth.

That’s pretty fucking cool, you have to say. Dead rock stars telling you people are the devil, tiny boxers living in people’s mouths. It doesn’t get much better than that.

None of this vague ‘I heard voices, the voices in my head told me to do it’ crap for this lad. He named names and everything.

Did you ever wonder that perhaps only schizophreniacs are wired in such a way that they can hear the voices of the dead and the dead being bored out of their minds, what with hanging around heaven or hell all day, play all kinds of tricks on them?

Hendrix - “I’m bored Jack Dempsey. Really fucking bored.”

Dempsey - “Are you on for a laugh?”

Hendrix - “Whaddya mean?”

Dempsey - “This is a trick Einstein taught me. We go find a schizophreniac and we plant mad ideas in their head. Probably about someone being the devil, get them wound up then we sit back and watch the mayhem. It’ll be gas.”

Hendrix - “Ah sure go on then. What’s the worst that can happen?”

The rest of us, convinced as we are of our sanity, are blind to the other worlds and dimensions around us so they pick on the mentally ill. It’s the afterlife equivalent of taking candy from a baby.

Yer man was remanded in custody at Dundrum Mental Hospital where one day Mama Cass and Rocky Marciano are going to get him to do something really bad.

And he wanted a stadium

by Twenty Major on April 9th, 2008

The HSE is set to announce further cutbacks after a meeting today. Already €85m in deficit in the first 3 months of the years some of the suggestions are to include recruitment restrictions and closure of beds during the summer months.

Yes, because people don’t get sick in the summer. And it’s not like we’re not already short of beds. But then if you don’t have enough nurses or doctors, rather lots of highly paid consultants, does it make any difference if you have all the beds in the world?

What a fucking joke the HSE is. If they want cutbacks start with the admin staff. The thousands of pencil pushing beaurocrats whose only function is to tell people there’s no bed for them. Then take their wages and hire some more doctors and nurses and buy some new equipment, equipment that actually works. Open some of the centres that have been promised to people.

And those revisionist cunts who love to talk about how great Bertie was and how much he did for the country and how he lived to serve the people, you can all go fuck yourselves. With an AIDS cock. He talked at the weekend about how his biggest regret was that he didn’t get a football stadium built. A fucking football stadium that no doubt he would have opened with his precious Manchester United, the unspeakable cunts.

I bet he wanted to get kitted out and play the first 5 minutes of a friendly against Ireland or something. His lifelong dream, not to bring peace to Ireland, not to provide a health service that functioned properly, but to build his own stadium. Maybe there might have been a statue of him outside it too, like Billy Bremner at Elland Road.

I’m telling you, if anyone ever builds a statue of Bertie I’m going to the blow the fucking thing up.

And another thing, a friend of mine just came back from America and gave me some Hershey’s chocolate. I don’t know why but what I do know is that there’s an aftertaste of sick when you eat some of it. Why would anyone make chocolate that tastes of vomit?