Why can’t people just talk normally?

by Twenty Major on September 15th, 2008

I was out this weekend in a bar I don’t usually frequent. It was a hotel bar, quite swish, but for a Friday evening very quiet compared to the usual chock-a-block pubs around town. I would say there were, in total, about 25 people drinking in the bar.

However, you might as well have been somewhere packed to the rafters such was the noise. People were shouting and roaring at each other, misguidedly thinking they were holding a normal conversation.

One group of people sitting at the bar seemed to be having a ‘Who can shout the loudest competition’. One of the lads would bellow something which would be followed by one of the women cackling like a demented witch using a megaphone, which would spark the other lad to howl a response at the top of his voice and the other woman would shriek her reply. They were sitting no more than a foot apart yet they were talking as if they were fifty yards away from each other.

I realise in a busy bar you have to raise your voice in order to be heard but when the bar is as quiet as this one why must you scream and shout like that? The knock-on effect, of course, was that everybody in the bar began to talk in the same way. It was ear-piercing and frankly uncomfortable.

Personally I’m of the opinion that my conversation is meant for those with whom I’m sharing the table/bar space. I feel distinctly unsettled if I think anyone else can listen in to what I say. It’s not that I’m revealing secrets or anything like that, it’s just that it’s none of their fucking business. That’s why it drives me mad when somebody chooses to sit close to you when they could choose any number of seats further away.

I just can’t understand people who think their conversation is so important that they have to have it at such a pitch that everybody in the room can hear it.

A couple of weeks ago I was meeting Jimmy the Bollix in town on a Saturday afternoon. It was 1pm and I was early. I took my book and went for what I hoped would be a quiet pint in McDaids. I hoped wrong. There was a gang of women there and I am not joking or exaggerating in the slightest when I say they were making more noise than a troop of elephants being raped by Godzilla and his family. Shrieks of laughter, wailing, cackling, high-pitched yelling and talking over each other. Honestly, if it was 1am you might be able to get your head around it but at 1pm in the afternoon it was just pure ignorance.

I sat at the window, looking across at Bruxelles, and put my iPod on as loud as it would go and I swear I could still hear them when these eruptions of sound would spew from them. I’m all for hen-parties having a good time but, you know, have a little consideration too. If I had been in that group I would be embarrassed at the noise that was being made. These people weren’t beacuse they were ignorant cunts. Just like the cunts in the bar on Friday night.

People need to learn to shut the fuck up.

Resident Eejits

by Twenty Major on September 12th, 2008

Katy French is a zombie, has come back to life and can move at enormous speed. Well, that’s the conclusion I’ve drawn from tonight’s Evening Herald front page. The headline screams:

GARDAI CHASE KATY’S KILLER

Time to learn how to fly

by Twenty Major on September 12th, 2008

So the plans for the Metro North are going on display and Dubliners were warned to expect massive disruption to their daily lives when construction begins.

We already know they’re going to dig up a big chunk of St Stephen’s Green and now I read that Westmoreland Street could be closed to traffic for up to five years. Which is a bit mad when you think about it. Where is the traffic supposed to go?

I have been in cities when they have been constructing/embiggening metro systems and the disruption is mental. Whole chunks of neighbourhoods collapse, roads are closed, traffic grinds to a halt and lots of blokes with hard hats stand around appearing to do very little.

So I am concerned that in cities in which they already have metros and have experience of digging the tunnels etc that things are going to be even worse in Dublin. We saw what a fantastic job they did with the port tunnel. Wasn’t there the story (perhaps apocryphal) that they built it about 5 inches too small for some of the biggest trucks? And it seems to be closed at the drop of a hat, if it’s not computer issues, it’s leaking or cracking or something goes on fire inside it.

They say 1/5th of the Green will be removed then put back but they’re going to need much more than 1/5th to work in. Machinery, vans, portaloos, men with hard hats standing around appearing to do very little. Utter carnage. Then add the closure of Westmoreland Street, probably the widest street in the whole city (right?), which handles a huge amount of traffic every day, and it’s going to be absolute mayhem just so we can get people to the airport quicker.

I’m all for metros, the more of the traffic we take off the surface the better, but I wish they’d done it years ago. Then we would have to be the people who lived with all the disruption. In years to come futurefolk will look back and think ‘My good sweet holy Allah, ruler of the whole world, how did they cope with having this thing built? Oh well, fuck ‘em an’ an’ anyways, I’m getting the metro to the inner-city district of Swords’.

And, of course, they say five years but nobody believes that, do they? I reckon it’ll take twice as long and cost ten times as much as they say it will.

What say we all move somewhere else while they’re doing it? I think it’s time to give Lando Calrissian a call and get working on them cloud cities.

Rimmel pigs

by Twenty Major on September 11th, 2008

“I’m following the Presidential election campaign in American with great interest indeed”, said Dirty Dave sipping a Jameson and milk in Ron’s last night (don’t ask).

“Is that so?”

“Yes, for I believe that what happens in America affects us all and as such we should be aware of the ramifactions and implications and the consequations of the result”.

“And what are your thoughts thus far?”

“Well, I think it’s quite obvious that David Coulthard is John McCain’s love child. Look at that jaw. Just look at it and tell me I’m wrong. As well as that Sarah Palin is an absolute lunatic whose family appears to be spewing babies out from all sides without anyone really knowing whose they are. Plus she looks like a downmarket Wonder Woman and who needs that in their life? Not me, that’s for sure”.

“What about the Democrats?”

“I don’t know the first thing about Senator Joe Biden apart from the fact that an anagram of his name is ‘Job-orientated, sane’, which really does set him apart from George W Bush, which can only be a good thing. But while I do like Barack Obama and his terrorist fist-jabbing, I have to take issue with him over his recent comments”.

“Which comments are those?”

“The one about putting lipstick on a pig and it still being a pig”.

“Ahh, but isn’t everyone conveniently overlooking the fact that Obama was referring to John McCain, not Scary Palin, just so they can play the ’sexist’ card? As well as ignoring the fact that McCain himself used that very expression to slam Hilary Clinton’s health care plan?”

“Yes, yes they are. However, it is denegrating to pigs”.

“To pigs?”

“Yes. Some people like to put lipstick on pigs and to say the pig is just a pig even though it has lipstick on is just outrageous”.

“It is?”

“Yes, it’s quite clearly not a pig”.

“What is it then?”

“It’s a pig with lipstick. A subtle distinction, I know, but one which should not, nay, must not be overlooked. To say a pig with lipstick is the same as a pig without is despicable, fallacious and grossly misinformed”.

“Yeah, but why would anyone want to put lipstick on a pig?”

“Christ”, he sighed. “It’s so they taste better when you kiss them”.

Corrib gas pipeline

by Twenty Major on September 10th, 2008

See all the fuss today? That wouldn’t happen here in Dublin, not around these parts anyway. The minute Shell laid some pipe the lads would have it ripped up to make bombs to chuck at each other.

Come on Mayo folk, a bit of inter-village warfare will sort this whole problem out. Nobody has to die from hunger striking and then we can all get rich off the gas that got sold for half-nothing instead of just the politicians who got the back handers to make the sale in the first place.

Stinking Tinkling

by Twenty Major on September 10th, 2008

“You know”, said Stinking Pete, “there is nothing more glorious than a good, long shower”.

“But hang on a minute”, I said, “you are not called Stinking Pete because you reek of expensive aftershaves, colognes, body sprays and deodorants made from the freshly plucked petals of the most fragrant flowers found only on the most hard to reach mountainsides. You are called Stinking Pete because you smell like socks dipped in cat piss, rolled in cloves and seeped in a vat of the sweat squeegied from the gooches of professional wrestlers”.

“I know what you’re saying but if you just let me fin-”

“It is well known that one of the reasons you smell like this is because you rarely wash and even when you do the dirt and grime and grease is so ingrained that it makes little or no difference”.

“Yes, but-”

“In fact, you are so filthy that the entire surface of your skin is like one giant blackhead. Merely brushing off you causes eruptions of pus so fierce that once a little boy on the far side of the road got some in his eye and his eye melted because your septic discharge was so noxious”.

“I hear you, however the thing is-”

“There is dirt under your fingernails that contains DNA from species that has become extinct and dirt, that if you left it to stew in a petri dish, would produce entirely new species altogether”.

“Look, all I’m-”

“And as for your ears, well, if there’s ever a powercut in here we can just turn you to one side and pour the wax into a mould and we’d have a candle mountain the likes of which the EU could barely imagine”.

“If you would just-”

“And your teeth. Given the close proximity of them to your nose and eyes, and your propensity for picking stuff out of those places and eating it, it’s little wonder that along with the most virulent looking plaque I have ever seen there is a gelatinous coating of snot and eye-bogies which you can almost hear go ‘glurp glurp’ as you speak. In short you are the filthiest, stinkingest Pete I know and the idea that you would find a shower glorious is simply ludicrous”.

“Are you quite finished?”

“Quite”.

“Well then. I just meant that it was glorious because it is, apart from a swimming pool, all of which in Dublin I’m banned from, the only place you can happily piss down your own leg without people judging you”.

“Ron, give me six pints to take away please”.

Maybe it’s just me…

by Twenty Major on September 9th, 2008

…but I’m not sure why everyone is getting so freaked out about a large hardon colander.

Drinking while pregnant

by Twenty Major on September 9th, 2008

There was a big story on the news this morning about how they want to put warning labels on alcohol because it turns out that 2/3rds of Irish women drink when they are pregnant.

The jist of the complaint was that ‘many women still do not know the dangers of drinking while pregnant’.

Now, I suppose you have to make the distinction between having the odd glass of wine or whatever else and what meaning using the word ‘drinking’ conjours up. If they’re all being clumped in together then that’s rather unfair.

However, I steadfastly refuse to believe that there is a single woman in Ireland who doesn’t know that drinking excessively when pregnant may cause problems. I know we bemoan the lack of common sense but surely you don’t need to be a certified genius to know that if you go out on the piss on a regular basis you could be endangering the baby.

Wouldn’t it be better to say ‘There are some women who just don’t care about the consequences of drinking while pregnant’?

Then we can view the warning labels correctly when the rest of us are faced with them, right up there with:

Do not use microwave to dry cat.

Those sneaky motherfuckers

by Twenty Major on September 8th, 2008

I have been having some problems with NTL in the last couple of weeks. They came around to install a new box which gives me all kinds of funky new stuff. The new stuff is generally based around the appearance of the menus and TV guides and all that but never mind.

However, since then I don’t have any of my sports channels (boo!), and a plethora of the other channels fail to work as well. So I called them up and some nice young chap said he’d send a booster signal through the cables to rejiggify my box and my channels would work. Of course that didn’t solve the problem.

So I called them up again and went through much the same spiel with some young lady. Didn’t work. The next day another young man did something which also did not work. Then the next day the same young man sent it off to some other department and said they’d fix it. They did not. When I rang again another young lad told me that the department the previous chap had sent the issue to had simply closed the case without doing anything and that he, stout fellow that he was, would send it off again and it would be fixed within 24 hours. It was not.

I estimate that I have spent about 8-10 hours on the phone to NTL in the last seven days. Of those 8-10 hours I would say I have talked to someone for about 45 minutes, in total, while the rest of the time has been spent on hold listening to Vivaldi’s Four fucking Seasons and that cunt telling me my call is in a queue and it will be answered shortly.

So, yesterday, after waiting for 28 minutes for my call to answered and dreaming up ways of bringing Vivaldi back to life so I can kill him painfully for writing that fucking music, a wretched slattern of a girl answers the phone.

“Hello, NTL. Can you confirm your name, account number and address please”.

I do this.

“How can I help you?”, she said quite clearly chewing gum like a retard cow chewing the cud.

“Well, if you have a look at my case there you’ll see I’m having this ongoing issue with my sports channels and-”

*click*

She hung up on me.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”, I yelled which made Bastardface sit up and go ‘Ruff’ such was the ferocity of my tone. The fucking geebag hung up on me because she saw the notes and couldn’t be arsed doing anything. I was a touch livid. So I rang up again. Waited. Stewed. Paced up and down. I was going to give whoever answered such a piece of my mind they’d go into a coma on the spot. And never wake up. I was going to demand to speak to a supervisor and give them a verbal raping. I waited. Ten minutes on hold. Screw you Vivaldi. I hope all your descendants get bitten on the anus by crows. Fifteen minutes. I will hunt down the guy who does the hold announcements and I will pull his tongue out of his mouth with a pliers. Twenty minutes. Somebody, anybody, is going to die.

Twenty-five minutes later I hear the now familiar pause as the music stops. I can hear the background hum of the call centre as they sit around and see who can not take a call for the longest time. I am ready. I have waited so long for this. 25′34″ to be exactly.

“Hello, NTL. Can you confirm your name, address and account number please?”

Oh those cunts. Those utter, utter cunts. How can they have known? You see, instead of a young workshy helpmong they have directed my call to the one person you simply cannot give out to. An old lady. She sounds a bit like my Mam used to sound. Kindly, nice, gentle. I just can’t be irate. Fuck you NTL, you unspeakably sneaky cunts. They probably have some kind of sensor system in the phones which tells them when a customer has reached the point of no return.

“Oh-oh. This call has a Temperometer reading of 87!”

“Quick, put it in old Mary’s queue”.

You just can’t shout at old ladies when they sound as lovely as she did. In the end I explain to her what the problem is. She asks me do I want her to send a booster signal down the line. I cry a little inside. She asks me all the same stuff that all the others have asked me. I cry a little more because such a large part of me wanted some ignorant youth to do it so I could snap and say ‘Why would you need me to give you all the information I’ve already given you half a dozen times in the last few days, you miserable, muttonheaded ninny?”.

She’s so nice and has that elderly wobble to her voice and you know that even if she was just making you a cup of tea and toast it’d be the nicest cup of tea and toast ever. I still don’t have any sports channels but old Mary has at least organised for an engineer to come out and tell me that he’ll send a booster signal to the box from the comfort of my front room.

Which, of course, will not work.

I know it’s old…

by Twenty Major on September 7th, 2008

…and probably everyone in the world has seen this before but it still makes me laugh.