Q: Why did the exchange server cross the road?

A: To make my life difficult.

See, I’ve been studying for exams the last while and hence not shitting on about nothing here as much as I’d like to. Work. Parenting. Running the insane asylum I call my house. Learning a book. You name it kid. Something is going to have to take a back seat for a while so I can keep one step ahead of the recession by achieving a professional qualification and receive a vial of Bill Gateses blood in the post to smear on my first born in a moneygrabbing ritual of making as many years as you like in college completely worthless.

Yeah yeah we know you worked your arse off.

Yeah yeah we know you have years of experience.

Yeah yeah we know you could probably work here with your eyes closed.

But Wait! Did you fork out four grand and stick in another few years for a separate certificate from a third party that says you can do what you have been doing for the last ten years?

No?

Right so fuck off.

And no doubt when everyone has a professional certification that’ll be worthless too, so the whole sad circle begins again.

Colour me cynical but I find it hard to see professional certifications as anything but a cash cow for the people issuing them. Not a bad money spinner in fairness, but one that speaks very much to the buzz word spouting corporate managers who know nothing about what the people they hire are supposed to be doing exactly, but recon because someone else said they could do it then they must be competent without ever having to take responsibility for the output of the worker in question. Rather than a rigorous selection process they just look for a certificate, negating the need to actually see how people might fit in and adapt first. In thinking about it, maybe workplaces might be better places if everyone got a say on who got taken on rather than some numpty who has no consideration for the fact that this person might have to sit beside me for the next few years. In fact, I think people’s CVs should have a section on hygene and eating habbits for just such a reason. Why not go all the way and intorduce a professional certification in showering before you come to work and not sucking an apple through its own skin at your desk you horrible smelly bastard.

Oh, and PS. Get a fucking haircut. You look like a hungover pineapple only with worse makeup.

Well whaddaya know?

I’ve just realised that yesterday was The Howard Town Brewery’s first birthday.

I only kicked it off because I was trying to put a mix together at the time and I ran out of ideas, so I started typing to take my mind off it for a while. I have to say, its been one of my better brain farts. I never realised how theraputic throwing swear words and half baked opinions into the public domain would be. Thanks to the six people who have commented over the year, and thanks to a certain Mr Bock the Robber for throwing the odd bit of traffic my way.

In fact, I’m going to buy the seven of you a pint next time I see any of you.

So there you have it. The upside to having no readers is that I get to buy a round without having to be up to me bollix in Anglo. Plus, I get to say things like CUNT. And WANK.

HUZZAH!!

More Death at Eleven.

Sometimes you need to take an objective look at how the world is. Its difficult at the best of times as objectivity can be highly subjective most times, you are seeing things from your point of view and its hard to let that go and drop your prejudices towards any given topic. But sometimes it pays to take a long, hard and often painful look at who people are and what motivates them.

Step back in time.

Its summer time, 2002.

Big Brother is broadcasting its usual fare of voyeuristic car crashism, featuring a fat girl with a fatter mouth who, for some reason, endeared herself to the viewing public by being annoying. People gobbled it up more eagerly than she gobbled the man parts of one of her housemates on live television. She got drunk, fell over, shouted, swore and generally made a rather large tit out of herself and still we laughed, we cried, we nodded at how normal she was and tuned in every night to see normal people doing normal things. We bought the newspapers to see this beacon of mediocrity become animated into a cultural icon through the release of a workout video and a racist tirade.

She then became all that was wrong with society. Mouthy. Drunk. Indebted. Vulgar. Unrefined. The very things that made her dear to everyone were now the things that made her stand out as everything we dared not admit to..

We saw ourselves.

And we didn’t like what we saw.

We came to realise that in putting normality on a pedestal we were faced every day with our own failings. We shunned her. We hated her. We used her as a target against which to pin our self loathing without ever coming to the realisation that it was the very likeness of ourselves that we were drawn to in the first place. Or didn’t we? Maybe that was the very thing that turned the tide in the first place. Maybe, on some deeper level, it was when we became aware that it was ourselves we were looking at did the tide turn. Maybe after we realised what we were looking at did we try to smash the mirror.

When the drunken, mouthy racist in all of us went on show we decided that we didn’t like what we saw and tried to change the channel. But there we were again. On every channel. On every newspaper. In every magazine. We were there. We were drunk. We were shouting. Our relationships were falling apart. We had no money. We had debt. We hated ourselves now that we saw her for what we all saw in ourselves and we couldn’t escape it.

Now she is going to die, and we’ll all be there too.

I’ve been trying to understand what makes people want to watch so closely, and I think I’ve figured it out. I think in seeing her die we can try to fool ourselves into believing we can see everything rotten we saw in us die with her. In some dark part of our souls we want to believe that we can forget about everything she forced us to see in ourselves and once she is gone, we can go back to watching stars fall from grace and forget about it when we change the channel because they are not like us, so we are not like them. Their failings are their own. Not ours.

I’m sure we’ll have a minutes silence when she is gone. But at the back of our minds we will be glad to see the end of a terrible era of introspection and a time in which we were forced to realise that this is what we all are. Mouthy, drunken, indebted, flawed people with a most unhealthy taste for the macabre far beyond that of anything that has walked the earth before us.

Until of course the new queen arrives to become the next cess pit into which we can dump all our failings. Big Brother 2009 is just around the corner.

Line up ye hopefuls. Reality beckons.

Why wont you just SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN?

Anyone who knows me will tell you it takes a great deal to get me to lose my cool. Not just because I’m cool. I am, but to boot I generally have a  level headed and pragmatic approach to problems. I don’t freak out. I did a few times and found that it didn’t help, so I gave up on it.

However.

If there is one thing that really fucks me off its trying to explain something to someone and while I’m talking they are looking at me nodding and going umhmm. umhmm. umhmm.

Me: So what you need to do is…

Them: [NOD] umhmm. umhmm. umhmm. [NOD] umhmm. umhmm.

Me: Pay attention this is important, you need to…

Them: [NODNODNOD] umhmm. umhmm. [NOD] umhmm. [NOD] umhmm. umhmm.

Me: [PAUSE]

Them: [NOD] umhmm. umhmm. umhmm. [NOD] umh….

Me: [STARE]

Them: [PAUSE]

Me: So you need to…

Them:  [NOD]

Me: [BOOM!]

This morning I nearly strangled a man much bigger than me in the bollix because I couldn’t get a fucking word out because he persisted in looking at me like twat. Nodding. Mhmm-ing. Nodding. I really don’t understand how this is supposed to signify understanding. All it signifies is the fact that you want the other person to THINK you understand so you use all your understanding muscles in the effort of nodding and making noises like a seal in a musel.

Why dont you fucking clap while your at it. At least that way you’d be funny and I might feel less like kicking you in the neck.

The New Ruling Class

Its been all over the news the last few days about 13 year old Alfie Patten and his girlfriend Chantelle. They recently had a baby. I’m sure you heard. Alfie was 12 and Chantelle was 14 when she conceived. They now have a daughter called Maisie.

I saw a picture on a tabloid website today and Alfie looks about eight years old. I also heard him being interviewed on the radio and he sounds about five years old. The interviewer asked him how he was going to manage financially.

He asked the interviewer “whats financially?”.

Now it’s come to light that two other boys, one would have been 15 and the other 13 at the time of Maisie’s conception are claiming paternity, or at least saying there is a chance that they might be her father. Poor Alfie is in a bad way. He’s 13. Chantelle’s parents have confirmed that more than one boy was spending the night with her at their home.

Now, I’m not going to bang on about the morality of it. That’s not what struck me as wrong about the whole thing, as morally dubious as it obviously is.

What did strike me is the fact that had a 14 year old boy been sleeping with twelve year old girls, impregnating one, the media response might have been somewhat different. The first question I had to ask myself was why in godses names is this girl not up on statutory rape charges?

Secondly, in the most practical of terms, it is clear that Chantelle’s parents knew she was sexually active and enabled it in allowing her boyfriends (yes, they were boys) to spend the night with her. Surely they must take culpability in this whole sorry mess. Now, we have a 13 and a 15 year old with  a new baby and wholly irresponsible grand parents who have in real terms proven themselves to be probably less qualified to look after Maisie than her young parents. Surely she deserves better. What sort of a life can she be given by the people who are supposed to be providing for her?

A 13 year old father who doesn’t know what the word financially means, a mother who, at 14, was sleeping with too many boys to take an educated guess as to who the father of her child is, one set of grandparents who allowed and enabled their daughter to get into this position in the first place and another set of grandparents who hired Max Clifford as soon as the news broke.

Max Clifford.

He’s a publicist in case you didn’t know.

The future reads like a maths problem that poor Alfie wouldn’t be able to crack.

Q: Maisie is no years old. Her dad is 13. What age will Maisie’s dad be when Maisie is five?

A: Just turning old enough to sign on.

Having said all that, best of luck to them. Fuck knows they’ll need it.

From the Mouthes (and Faces) of Babes…

Sometimes you choke on your words and you search for the right expression instead….

Why I aughta….

If  owned such a look of outrage I wouldn’t need to write here at all. I’d merely sit at home and scowl out the window. Come protest time, away with your measly placards. Hoist me up, point me in the right direction and let the scowl do the talking.

Heres an Idea

Next time Biffo feels like appointing a minister for finance, or health, or anything else, lets make sure they have some sort of a background in the field they are being put into.

Infact(aaa), lets go one step further and ask that elected representatives not be handed roles at all. Lets ask that they stick to the business of representing us and demand that when the head of a department is being appointed they have the qualifications and background that would get them the gig were it in the private sector.

First they apply in writing.

Then they send in a CV.

If we need, say, a new minister for finance (just as an example), lets make sure that they are not, say, a solicitor. Lets look for someone who is, maybe, an economist, or has spent the last twenty years as the financial director of a large company with an impeccable record in corporate governance (if such a thing exists anymore) and a clean audit sheet. If need be we can scour the globe for the right people for the job. We can pay them a ministerial salary to make it attractive, and if they cock it up we can sack them.

Its only in this way we can put an end to entirely unsuitable people being allowed to be incompetent in positions which have a direct effect on our lives. In fairness, if you, or me, or anyone else had been running anything so badly as the current government we would be on the dole in a heartbeat. Instead its the hard working man on the street that is consigned to suffer the consequences of a system that was proven to have failed twenty five years ago when CJH and his lackies were bleeding the country dry, this shambles, that has been propped up by vested interest to the detriment of everyone else, careering towards nothing.

Under the current system Ronan Keating is just as qualified to run the country’s finances as the man who is actually running it.

Ronan fucking Keating.

Chew on that over your breakfast.

On Patriotism

I’m going blue in the face from listening to it. Its our duty. Its what we all must do. We must all bear the load. We must all contribute to Neary’s retirement. We must all contribute to the rich. We must all have less so that the people with plenty can have more.

Bollox.

Bollox to it all I say.

Bailing out a shower of corrupt millionaires is not my duty. Nor is it yours. Remember, the banks and the government conspired with large scale developers to swindle the rest of us out of anything we might ever hope to have by making us all think we were doing well out of giving them all our money.

Now that things have gone bust, Brian Lenihan has earmarked €7 billion to put them right without even reading the documents provided to him on the matter. I think, when all is said and done that should tell you everything you need to know about the current state of affairs in our government.

In the last budget Messrs Lenihan and Cowen dusted off their shears and began cutting.

They cut funding for disabled children.

They cut funding for old people.

They took from our education system.

They took from our health system.

They put their filthy hands in our pockets and took from our pay packets.

They took from the front line public services that keep the country running.

They took from the pockets of the gardai, the nurses, the teachers, the under appreciated who protect us, care for us and educate our children.

Surely we must all heave together in these challenging times. Surely, we must collectively put our shoulders to the wheel and heave together to gather the momentum we need for a brighter tomorrow. Surely. We must.

Indeed.

However when I see my good contribution to a failing economy being thrown after bad money into a cesspit of corruption and cronyism then my will to contribute takes a back seat to my disbelief at the malleability and naivety of the man on the street.

In the dead of night, as we slept soundly in our beds of debt, they came into our houses and they stole from us. Be under no illusion about this whatsoever. They propped up a sham and sold it to us all, telling us that we NEED to buy massively over priced housing. We need to own more than we could afford. We need to work at the cost of our time with our children. We need to pay for childcare because we need to work to pay what we owe to Sean Fitzpatrick and his friends.

I’ll tell you what we need.

Or rather I’ll tell you what we don’t need.

We don’t need to be told that its our moral obligation to soften the blow for the people who have strangled the entire country to within an inch of its life. I’m not very good at outrage. I’m the classic example of what Curtis White deemed the Middle Mind. However, this whole fucking fiasco has actually been keeping me awake at night. Not because I’m worried, I’m not. I have a job, and more importantly, I have options. I know through hell or high water I’ll be OK.

What has me is the sheer brazeness and cheek of the people we the people decided were good enough to govern us. A bunch of teachers and solicitors who jumped into bed with super rich banking types and threw money at builders making a property speculator out of the majority and a fool out of everyone. Now that the whistle has been blown my money and your money is being used to keep them all in the lives they are accustomed to. My money and your money is being squandered in boys clubs and divvied up amongst golden circles across the country as you sit there and read this.

And somehow its OUR patriotic duty to pay for it.

Take my advice. Get the hell out. Pack your bags and tell Brian Cowen that you will not be contributing anymore. You will take your tax and pay it to a government with the decency to provide you with a doctor when your sick, or a transport system when your not.

Patriotism.

The greatest motivator of fools known to mankind.

Prayer for a lost laptop

I left my laptop in Orio Al Serio, on the ground outside the car rental place. Five minutes before I had been commenting to my travelling companion about how dodgy the lads working there looked. How wrong I was.

I was two hours away by the time I’d realised it was missing. Thinking about it, I was programming the gps unit before the guy arrived with the car and I set the case down, got engrossed in the shiny gadget and walked away, got into the car and drove off.

Two hours later I rang the airport. Well, says the guy in Italian. I’d love to help but look son, its a laptop.

On the ground.

In a car park.

In an AIRPORT carpark.

But I’ll put the word out for you non the less.

Ten minutes later one of the guys I had been taking for a scummer before the car arrived called me. He picked up the laptop and brought it into the hut. He had no number for me so he was keeping it untill I dropped the car back, then the guy in the airport lost and found passed my number on and sure enough he called.

I told my mother, she said St Anthony must have been watching over it. He’s the patron saint of being a dozy prick apparently, and I should do something to repay him. So I said fine, tell him I’ll be in Bar Sol in Rapallo later and I’ll look after him. I waited for ages, but he never showed.

Funny how he can find a laptop in a carpark but cant find a neat bar in a small town.

The New Heroin

We are living in a world gone wrong.

We are blindly trudging our way from birth to the grave without ever stopping to look around and ask ourselves why we do it, what it is about the whole thing that makes it worthwhile and if there may be another way to make the journey somewhat more fulfilling and enjoyable.

Work has become a means unto its own end. We have been groomed to be consumers fuelled by emptiness and driven by greed. Once we leave school we join the masses in the great dark huddle in which we turn off our imaginations and stride into a sort of intellectual blindness that starts with us closing what was most important to us in our childhood, and over time, allowing our greatest asset, our ability to conceptualise through imagination and realisation, atrophy into the appendix of our Psyche.

We work to pay for things.

We work to pay for the privilege of coming home and turning on the television to look at what other people have imagined. We work to pay for the books we read, the music we listen to and the opinions we regurgitate. We work to pay for the privilege of not having to create anything that makes our life worth living.

We live in a world in which we work to be entertained by all that is foul in the realest of terms. We show up in the morning, go home in the evening and absorb and consume but above all we never imagine. We clock in, we press the buttons and slide through the motions in cloth that’s never quite cut to measure. We disable what could make us great so we can pay for what others can do.

Imagine what we all could be were our imaginations set free. Were we to shake off the chains that bind us to a culture of acquiring and lies. Were we to, for a moment, imagine again, and to be as potential as the limits of our imaginations. Were we to remove the limits imposed upon us by a world that sees us merely as shades of grey and not the children we once were. Hopeful, optimistic spacemen and adventurers poised to set off on this great journey that would lead us all one day to be kings. Only it turns out that it took us until we got here to find out that we couldn’t afford it.

What a shame to drive all day to find out the park is closed.