Monthly Archives: September 2010
Business opportunity
Dear inventors and boffins, I need a head to screen converter. Or a head to fingers to screen converter. See, I have this thing I want to write and in my head it’s perfect. I can visualise it, I can … Continue reading
Insane in the lamebrain
If there’s one thing that being online quite a lot teaches you it’s that there is, literally, no end to the amount of stupid people or to the stupidy of the stupid people. Even when it’s blindingly obvious something is … Continue reading
Bertie wants to be President
It’s true, he does. There are 10 very good reasons why he should never be elected to this office. 1 – He’s a cunt 2 – He’s a sneaky cunt 3 – He’s a sneaky, lying cunt 4 – He’s … Continue reading
Dancing on Charlie Haughey’s grave
So Liveline is going mental at this video of a chap called Vincent Keaney dancing on Charlie Haughey’s grave. The dancing starts at around 7′, here’s a quick GIF if you can’t view YouTube in work. Image via @JoeLeogue Many … Continue reading
Oh, the humanity
I watched that film Letters from Iwo Jima the other day. I do like a good war film. This was a bit long but quite good and we have that moment where the Japanese soldiers, banzaing around to protect the … Continue reading
Cunt overload
[photopress:bertieandronan.jpg,thumb,pp_image] At the opening of the new convention centre in Dublin today. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part but Bertie looks sick. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial. Pic via Broadsheet.ie
Halal, is it meat you’re looking for*
Around and about the SCR there’s a load of Halal shops. I’m not much into Halal meat, I have to say, but you can get some right good stuff in those shops. For example, those little sticky pastry things that … Continue reading
What with the what now?
Some actor who was in American Pie got caught driving while drunk. He’s been sentenced to probation plus, get this, ’18 months of alcohol education classes’. If the cunt can’t make a good Manhattan after that there’s no hope for … Continue reading
The brown arts
Go in, hold your breath as long as possible, only breathe through your mouth, do your business as quickly as possible, come out, gasp for fresh air, exhchange looks with person who is next in the queue. Yours is a … Continue reading
I think we already know what happens
A particular bugbear of mine is the blanket acceptance that it’s ok for media outlets to take pictures of grieving people at funerals. Do we really need to see a picture of a 12 year old’s stricken mother as her … Continue reading
A particular bugbear of mine is the blanket acceptance that it’s ok for media outlets to take pictures of grieving people at funerals. Do we really need to see a picture of a 12 year old’s stricken mother as her daughter is brought to/from the church/graveyard?
I don’t think we do. I think it’s a gross invasion of privacy and I don’t understand why we simply accept this. I can tell you for a fact that if I were ever in that position and I saw cameramen I would insert the cameras, shards of lens end first, up their holes.
But more than that, why do we feel the need to report on funerals at all? Yes, the death of a 12 year old girl is awful and tragic and newsworthy. Her funeral is not. It’s should be a time for her family to grieve, away from the public eye, and without strangers writing cloying, sickly and turgid articles about the whole thing. Attempts to sound sincere and profound come across as nothing but patronising and artificial. You would need to be a skilled wordsmith to make funeral reporting anything other than vomit-inducingly bad.
We all know what happens at a funeral. None of them are that different from the other. A service, some prayers, probably a sermon given by a priest who barely knew the deceased, if they knew them at all, lots of crying and upset people. Only the names change.
Irish people have an uncommon interest in death and funerals. That is reflected by our media who no longer see or no longer care that their presence is a repellent intrusion into people’s lives. And those people have no comeback when their misery is used to sell newspapers and fluff up news bulletins.
They’ll claim they’re only giving the people what they want but would people really miss it if it were gone? I don’t think so. And we’d be better off for it.