O’Connell Street, Saturday afternoon, 3pm. It is quite busy, the penultimate Saturday before Christmas. There are people milling about hither and thither.
A woman leads a small child by the hand, holding shopping bags in the other. I am waiting to cross the road from the middle section to the Eason’s side. The woman does not wait. She does not look. She steps off the pavement, between two cars who are stopped and out into the path of a bus.
The bus driver is obviously used to people with a death wish as he stops in time, blows his horn and waves his hands in the air. He looks at her, and the small child who would have been first to be crushed under the wheels of his bus, and shakes his head. He moves on quickly, aware that others may try and take advantage of the fact he’s stopped and step out from in front of the bus into the path of the cars that are now moving in the other lane.
I follow the 6 steps of the safe cross road and make my way to the other side. As I walk towards St Stephen’s Green I see at least three more incidents when people decide they’ll play Russian Roulette with traffic. Each time the pedestrain hears the empty click and passes the gun on.
I saw on old woman get mowed down by a truck on the quays once. It was not pleasant. I have no desire to see it again. I just wonder where anybody needs to be in such a hurry that waiting for 20 seconds isn’t even given the slightest consideration.
As for the people who try to make cars slow down and stop by pushing their baby-filled buggies out into the road, I have no words …
smug beardy cunt nearly had me jumping in front of a bus
Ah, my mother always ranted about that. Testing the traffic with the buggy.
Maybe it is a death wish. Christmas shopping lemmings, throwing ourselves in front of traffic. Or just some strange, racial compulsion to jaywalk.
Testing the traffic, heh.
“Little Gately’s squashed”.
“Traffic’s bad so..”
I see idiot scumbags on the main road near me, stepping out into traffic, risking life and limb… with a pedestrian crossing just feet away. Like using it is only for sissy boys or something… fuck ‘em, if they’re that stupid let ‘em die.
You’re right though, it’s when you see it with kids that really disturbs… and of course thats the lesson passed on…
Ha, Gately. Love it.
Ah now Twenty. Natural selection is a beautiful thing. Who are we to interfere with it?
A moron in Dublin traffic is much like a slow gazelle on the Serengeti plains. Sooner or later it’ll get taken down and the wonderful cycle of nature will continue.
“racial compulsion to jaywalk”
eh?
Rapey you need to get over the beardy cunt.
I think the death dash a very Irish thing. It’s like the the Tour de France as the crowd converges and leans in on the cyclist as he bombs his way though the narrow gap.
And it comes down to the old law which states that the pedestrian always has right of way on the public highway. That’s why you always get compo if hit by a car.
If they don’t want them any longer why don’t they just throw them in the Liffey ? Or give them to a Priest?
They are weirdos.
In fairness though, a child buggy did manage to stop a train in Australia.
They are indeed weirdos and I have given some thought to this Twenty. The evolutionary standing of Ireland is in decline because, by and large, the wrong sort of people are breeding. Therefore it is the sacred duty of the superior, those who frequent this site and especially you yourself Mr Major, to spread their seed. For Ireland.
OK girls, volunteers needed. First ten get a free copy of his books.
Certainly, the wrong sort of people procreates. Like rabbits. It’s all they think about. I’d rather have a cup of tea. Or knit a sweater. That’s it. Or watch some telly. That’s it, discovery channel, cuppa tea and some knitwork.
Remember that poor foreign au pair who was killed protecting a baby from getting run over? Think it happened in Cork when a truck caught a buggy as it turned. The baby survived unscathed. If there’s a heaven….
maggot and JJ. If you haven’t seen the film ‘Idiocracy’ yet, I highly recommend that you do so. You’ve pretty much summed up the plot. It’s also a great fucking flick.
I thought this was just a Limerick phenomenon, I go fucking ballistic driving up O’Connell Street in Limerick with fuckers walking in and out through the traffic. If you knock someone down who can’t walk 20 fucking metres to the lights you should be let off scot free
Frank, there’s a set of pedestrian lights one street down from O’Connell street towards the river which take about 5 minutes to change. It would make you take your life in your hands on a windy rainy day.
” I’d rather have a cup of tea. Or knit a sweater. That’s it. Or watch some telly. That’s it, discovery channel, cuppa tea and some knitwork. ”
Seems just such a waste when, according to your previous comments, you are equipped to feed the five thousand. Photos please.
Imagine, a future Ireland with thousands of majorettes.
Again I refer to the scumbags on the corner of Tara Street and Townsend Street. They wait for no signal, I’ve seen three squashed in the last month alone.
That’s a good corner all right, provided it’s the fuckers down the alleyway beside the bridge that are getting squashed.
Westmoreland St/O’Connell Bridge is russian roulette jay-walking central.
I agree with Lung the Younger. This sounds like Darwinism in action.
I have seen “Idiocracy” and the biggest complaint I had about that movie was that it’s coming true.
I saw this on someone’s tagline and I think it’s brilliant:
“The trouble with people idiot-proofing things, is the resulting evolution of the idiot.”
And yet people lay on their horn and race past if you slow down to the legal speed [i]limit[/i] when driving through a rural village, talk about being caught between a rocky road and 3 tonne of cold steel.
Idiots drive technology, e.g.:
1985:
A dumb fuck touches the computer screen thinking it will open the document. Everyone laughs, except one silent computer scientist who quietly gets to work on the first touch screen.
It’s one of natures ways of eliminating the unintelligent from the human race. In the old days they would have been run down by horse and wagons.
The utmost in absolute idiocy are the dumb fucks who dare death by trying to beat a speeding train at a crossing. Not even a contest, but they have to give it a try anyway. They can be buried in a reacup.
Idiocracy… yeah, it rings a bell but if I’m right I started to watch it after a few glasses of wine and somehow I can’t remember anything past the first 5 minutes. I would be strange though, watching a movie that can be summed up in two random comments on Twenty’s blog.
Everyone laughs, except one silent computer scientist who quietly gets to work on the first touch screen.
Haha, Holemaster, I work for a software company and I keep on telling them: don’t try to fix the user, fix the software – they laugh at me then. It only shows how programmers think…
Maggot, you keep on asking! Google it. Put some effort in. I promise you there is more than enough photos of me on the web. Some of them are even nice.
Actually, now that I think of it, you could find my phone number, email address and eventually my real name and surname along with my current employer, books I read, music I listen to and stuff I’ve been up to for the last 10 years. With a little effort.
That’s actually quite scary when you think of it.
I once witnessed a twat cross the road in the North Strand, not far from the fire station. Hoodied and Nike’d up and out of his biscuit, Missus and kid in tow thinking that he’d beat the bus. He didn’t, and was clipped by the bus and spun to land about 40 yards away.
The guy surprisingly survived, though I suspect he was that he was on strong painkillers already… forward thinking or just strung out, well if his Missus was anything to go by… off of her head..
Beside hoping the guy made it through, I was left wondering, how is it we need a licence to own a dog and not for children.
You mean Celery isn’t your real surname?
So Twenty, does the government listening to you and introducing a law making it legal to kill knacker burglars redeem them in your eyes?
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1214/breaking19.htm
Not really maggot but I’ll gladly bash anyone about the head if they break into my house.
As soon as I stop cowering in my panic room
I’d love to get locked in a panic room with Jodie Foster.
Well, she wouldn’t like it, in fairness.
Why not? Sniff.
I’ve written to Jim and he will fix it.
Given the choice between sausage and fish she’ll choose the seafood.
G’night!
Not everything comes down to sex! We could play Mah Jong and I Spy. Discuss literature and poetry.
Night night.
“OK girls, volunteers needed. First ten get a free copy of his books.”
Second 10 get 2 free copies?
Not to derail the train of conversation but am I the only one who thought the marketing of the movie Idiocracy was a stroke of manipulative genius? Everyone seems only too eager to overlook the fact that it was an average movie at best, under the pretense that “the man” doesn’t want us to see it.
Oh, and also…
http://xkcd.com/603/
“And it comes down to the old law which states that the pedestrian always has right of way on the public highway. That’s why you always get compo if hit by a car”
Not since the (completely, TOTALLY unenforced by the Garda) jaywalking laws were changed a few years back. Unless you’re hit at a pedestrian crossing, or if the car can be proven to be exceeding the speed limit, you’re fucked, AFAIK.
Also: Try driving through Dun Laoghaire on any given day (Sundays are worst). I’ve never done it without jamming on the brakes at least three times because some fucking gobshite has decided he/she doesn’t need to look before crossing the road.