Testing 1.. 2 .. Is this thing still working?

*looks tentatively around to make sure no-one's moved the furniture*

Jayyyysus - nearly 3 months without a single solitary bleedin post. Not even a youtube video!

Now I could say that the last few months have been busy (and they have people!) but to be fair I think a better excuse is just to say that blogging seems to be a lot like going to the gym. In the early heady days you're full of that effervescent ebullience becoming somewhat fanatical with 2 or 3 posts a day (okay thats where the gym analogy ends) but then "things" start to creep in - work, drinking, more drinking and you start to get lazy.

Ahhh shur I'll write up that film review tomorrow.

Hmmm last night would make a good post but I'm just too knackered.

It's raining outside (sorry thats for the gym!)

You can tell you've lost the blogging vibe when something happens and your first instinct isn't "that'd make a great blog post"!

So lets ease back into this lark. Somehow I don't think I have the patience to recap over the last 3 months (this may or may not be done Memento style in a non-linear flashback format but Hey who knows!) so lets start with the last week or so ... and what a week it's been!

The joys of working in "education" (and I use the term oh so loosely) is that I am now officially on summer holidays so its been a case of lots of gigs and cinema with the odd bit of restaurant work thrown in to cover my high maintenance lifestyle!

So whats been going on?

Well I've seen 3 of the musical highlights of the year in the space of 2 weeks. First up was the phenomenal Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. I'd had a good feeling about this having listened to the album and no doubt the mojitos, beers and bottle of Rioja in the Winding Stair helped as well! I haven't quite made up my mind about the Venue Formerly Known as the TBMC. At the Cathy Davey gig there was a ridiculous amount of noise filtering down from the bar but that had as much to do with the quietness of Ms Davey's voice

No such issues with the bould Ms Jones! From the moment she came strutting out she gave it socks - that woman is sixteen kinds of cool - the band were class - listen anywhere that you've got a brass section, drums AND a bongo player is ok with me. She dragged various people onto the stage and the place was just hopping! The line of the night had to go to the lead guitarist of the Dap Kings (possibly even cooler than Ms Jones herself)

Band go off stage

Crowd roaring for more

Crowd roar a bit more

Guy comes on by himself

"Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings are not the kind of band who just do encores for the sake of encores...

So what I'm asking you is this ...

Are you clapping waiting for something to happen or are you going to MAKE something happen?!!"

Ligind!!

The place went mad!

Highlights Number 2 and 3 will have to wait cause I've got a poxy academic meeting to go to - so much for bleedin holidays.


...

Ahhh its good to be back in the gym

Wooooo hooooo!!

Got my tickets for Broken Social Scene!! Not sure if it'll top their performances at the Picnic or the Temple Bar Music Centre but who cares?!!

See yis in Vicar St peoples!

John Waters on Newstalk

I think a lot of people have been a bit reluctant to write about John Waters’ recent recent rants (and there really is no other way to describe them) about blogging for the simple reason that he’s clearly just dying to get some attention. The frankly lazy comments about bloggers being “stupid” are hilarious in their childish simplicity. For a man who holds himself out as a relatively erudite (quasi) intellectual you’d think he could come up with a more perspicacious (I just love that word) description than “stupid”.

Which brings us neatly onto his “debate” with Fergal Crehan from Tuppenceworth on Newstalk this morning. To those of you who weren’t aware of it Waters had issued a challenge to Gilroy and Byrne to find a blogger who could “string more than 3 sentences together”.

Firstly I’d like to say a huge fair play to Fergal. He was reassuringly calm and composed in the face of Waters increasingly nonsensical ranting. The 2 were both given a minute each to present their case to address the issue of whether blogs contribute anything to society (I’m paraphrasing). Waters argument was essentially that blogs (as well as being stoopid) are

• entirely negative
• are written by people with limited or no intelligence
• are like the “CB radio of the noughties” (i.e. just a fad)
• contribute nothing to society
• and are the equivalent of the random scribblings we see in public toilets

Fergal’s points were simply that

• you can’t make abject generalisations that all blogs are negative
• some blogs are written by Nobel Peace Prize winners and journalists (Waters completely avoided the question when it was put to him that writers in his own paper have blogs)
• you’re not obliged to read blogs – you filter the good from the bad

Most importantly Crehan noted that the whole point of blogs is that it gives people an opportunity to air opinions that would not necessarily find a space in the mainstream media and yes, while some of those opinions are those of cranks, you cannot possibly tar every opinion with that brush.

Two final points in me own rant. Firstly Fergal rightly took Waters to task for his random figure that apparently “60 to 70%” of the internet consists of pornography and more specifically he wondered where Mr Waters plucked this figure from. And this is where Mr Waters truly petulant childish manner shone through – “everyone knows that” (again I’m paraphrasing slightly) John Waters essentially came across like a small child who when stuck for an answer replies “just because” – but how do you know this to be true “just because! Everyone knows it’s true – stupid”

As if he hadn’t embarrassed himself enough (and the persistent talking over people really starts to grate after a while) Mr Waters managed to get the final word in – “I don’t read blogs anyway”

But they’re stupid

And negative

How do you know that Mr Waters?

Cause everyone knows it

...

Stupid

It had to happen eventually

This is brilliant - Jerry O'Connell does a spot on piss take of the Tom Cruise Scientology video - you can see the original here

He has that laugh down pat

Honestly officer we didn't rob the child....

What a weekend!

So it started off relatively sensibly. Saturday was all about Limerick and more specifically the Munster match. It just got better and better – free ticket for Thomond right on the touchline, free train, free hotel (thanks Eddie!).

The rain was absolutely ridiculous but luckily I’d bought the equivalent of a small tent (read oversized poncho) to keep off the tsunami that engulfed Limerick for the day. Suffice to say I was as happy as a pig in shite with only a slightly damp arse!

As for the match itself it’s funny the way you get superstitious about silly little things. This time last year, we’d somehow managed to scrounge 2 tickets for the Leicester match, the weather was equally bad and Leicester the selfish fuckers decided to ruin the party by beating Munster. Just something as stupid as going to Thomond in poxy weather can have you convinced in the back of your head that Wasps might do it. Obviously the main difference this year was that Munster had to win it and you could see from the off that no-one, not even the current champions were going to get in their way.

(Last year would be what Eddie O’Sullivan would call “a blip”!)

Personally I thought O’Gara, O’Callaghan and Foley (God we’re going to miss him) all had phenomenal matches. O’Driscoll really seems to have come into his own with the prolonged absence of O’Connell and I was delighted to see Stringer giving it socks against Reddan – roll on the 6 Nations!

The rest of the night was a blurry happy haze – this could have something to do with certain nameless friends spiking my pints of water (I tried!) with double gins – I was wondering why I couldn’t sober up!

Yesterday then I had to make it up to Naas for a friend’s 30^th. It was a perfect evening – just a few of us getting together for a dinner and lots of raimeising!

And thats when the fun started!

So after dinner we were walking back from the restaurant - myself Chris, Jen, Johnny and Steve along with Niamh (Chris & Jen’s 3 month old daughter) when we get a phone-call from the restaurant saying we’d left a bag behind. Jen and Steve decide to walk back and myself and the 2 lads carry on up the road with Niamh. (Insert appropriate 3 men and a baby joke here!)

So we’re walking along and the local Gardai pass us and give us a pretty funny look – about 5 minutes later they come back the other way and we get another funny look. Anyway we got back to the apartment to wait for Jen who has the keys and the shaggin Gardai pull up in their squad car!

“Everything alright here lads?”

“Ehhh yes guard, why?”

“We got 2 phonecalls about some suspicious activity involving a baby’s buggy and we wanted to check on ye”

“Oh right well that’d be Chris’ child”

“Right you are so, goodnight”

TWO PHONECALLS!!!

Seriously 2 things

First do the residents of Naas have nothing better to be doing?

Second generally speaking if 3 lads were going to abduct a child you’d think they’d be a bit more subtle than pushing her pram down a main street?!

Unbelievable!

Finally...

So one of the things that I really wanted to get into this year was a bit of photography. I've started developing an interest over the last few years playing around with my compact camera but figured that if I'm going to do this properly I'd better get a decent camera.
So after much humming and hawing and driving several people in various camera shops demented with questions, I settled on getting one of these.

Thankfully some of my very generous family (thanks ma and Dale!) chipped in for one for Christmas (I'm not bleedin made of money!) and I've been utterly baffled by it ever since.

So having been inspired by Claire's portrait a day project I figured its about time I started shooting something. So here are the first few efforts.

I'm debating whether to bring it with me to the Munster match on Saturday - madness?!

Productivity will be down for this quarter

So I get little enough work done cause of the bleedin interweb and then I find something thats going to COMPLETELY ruin any possible productivity (cough) Its called StumbleUpon and basically it generates random pages of whatever it is you're interested in. You can submit a list of general interests (trivia, books blah blah) or put in specific search terms and its absolutely class!

I found this here

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate. Please try the following: Click the Regime change button, or try again later. If you are George Bush and typed the country's name in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly. (IRAQ). To check your weapons inspector settings, click the UN menu, and then click Weapons Inspector Options. On the Security Council tab, click Consensus. The settings should match those provided by your government or NATO. If the Security Council has enabled it, The United States of America can examine your country and automatically discover Weapons of Mass Destruction. If you would like to use the CIA to try and discover them, click Detect weapons Some countries require 128 thousand troops to liberate them. Click the Panic menu and then click About US foreign policy to determine what regime they will install. If you are an Old European Country trying to protect your interests, make sure your options are left wide open as long as possible. Click the Tools menu, and then click on League of Nations. On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Head in the Sand section and check settings for your exports to Iraq. Click the Bomb button if you are Donald Rumsfeld. Cannot find weapons or CIA Error Iraqi Explorer

It reminds me of a sketch that Dylan Moran did a few years ago in Vicar St (its on the Monster DVD) Basically he was talking about euphemistic phrases that are bandied about in the media that normally sound quite nice and fluffy (give me a break I'm paraphrasing!) but mean something sinister. He said one of his favourites was regime change....

Actually screw that I found the clip, he tells it so much better than i do!