Look Out Below!

The X [blankiest] Y's of 20Z AKA My Movie Year; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Got an Unlimited Card

2012-01-01T15:01:00.001Z

This is the 4th (count em) time that I have endeavoured to rank my films of the year. Unlike each of the last 3, I actually feel qualified to do it justice this year. That is because I went to the cinema 76 times this year, and have the tickets to prove it. Now, basically, I like the films that I like and I never repeat myself. So, considering the number of absolutely shite films I've seen this year, I can't imagine that I forgot any of the good ones. Hence this list, condensed and considered, is a measure of quality that I'm very happy with. So here's what's in store.

I have compiled a list (then checked it twice) of my top 10 films of the year. All of the films on the list are here on merit, my merit. Essentially, like all good critics, I like the films that I like and I never repeat myself, which means that I have included only 1 comedy, 4 mood pieces, 1 foreign language film, 2 films that are largely dialogue-free and 11 total films in my top ten. As a gambling man, I would envisage that you, you there, reading this might have seen 1 or 2 of the films on the list. The title of the film contains a link to the trailer on the youtube, should you want to see what the fuss is for yourself.

To bump up the word count [it's over 9,000], I have included 3 paragraphs each film, but then try to hit you with some knowledge. Each film comes with a Filmschool 101 note, on something which stood out for me about the film. Film should make you think, give your mind a work out, make you break a mental sweat. The amount of effort that goes on to tell the story not only by the actions and dialogue but the mise-en-scene, the length of takes or the use of sound and colour all go into telling the story. In recognition of that, I'll just be writing a small bit on the more critical aspects of the film. All of these films are entertaining, but they are also affecting and well made, because that's what I think film should be. If you come out of a film and think, "so what", then you've just cursed that film with the worst critique you can hand down. If nothing else, none of these films are boring (well, two of them kind of are).

In addition please find attached below each piece a quick note on the Huu-wat? moment of the film. This is the moment that kind of comes out of nowhere, or indeed just makes overtly explicit something that had been implicit to the effect that all you can do it erupt into giddiness. I think every movie should have one, and this list comes jam-packed (apart from the boring one/two). For the greatest Huu-wat? of all time, consult number 7 on the list.

So without further ado, here is My Year in Criticism. That's the films other people liked that I hated.

Rise of The Planet of The Apes: First of all, there are too many prepositions in that title. I understand that this film is based on a ridiculous pitch (Alzheimer's quasi-cure makes supersmart apes), but even if you buy into the central conceit, or even if you don't, there is far too much bullshit in this film to make me care. For a start, and this turned Vince Mancini into a giddy little girl, there are no apes in this movie. I mean, the whole point, as far as I could tell, is that we need to give a shit about these apes, but there aren't any. And then the fake ones are turned into Wisenheimers, who have human concepts like freedom and pants, and renege on all of their apiness in favour of standing upright. Essentially, it should be called Planet of the Humans, because there's nothing even remotely ape-like about any of them. AND THEN, I mean, there's the Alzheimer's cure, which works for a period, then remisses. But there's a solid foundation there. For some reason the company decides that the drug's short-comings are the ape's fault and orders the work to be destroyed, along with the apes! Why would the president of a medicine company do that? Doesn't he like money? And another thing, why is the ape sanctuary run by the world's greatest ape-hater, non-scientist Brian Cox? This movie exists somewhere between Stephen King City, where the prison guards are worse than the convicts in the cells, and Vegetarian Island, where everyone who works with animals is cruel to them. FUCK OFF! In real life, the ape sanctuary would be run by kindly zoologists, zoo-keepers and Zooey Deschanel. I can take the talking fake, human-played apes, but I draw the line at unlikely ape sanctuary owners.

Bridesmaids: Like The Hangover but with women. Now. First of all, when did The Hangover become a measure of comedic quality? I didn't particularly like it. Anyway, what Bridesmaids did was took a whole load of male characters and cast females in the parts. There is vomit. There is poo-poo. There is a character, Megan or Jackie or Dave or whatever her name was, who was clearly written for Zach Galifianakis. The only believable female character in the movie is the one on the plane who tries to freak everyone out ("I had a dream the plane crashed. You were in it" - hi mum). The thing about it is that, as a man I was clearly not part of this movie's target audience - and that's perfectly fine. It may have been a great film, but coming at it from an objective point of view it just seemed completely stark-raving mad. The lead character is, and I don't say this lightly, a complete and utter bitch. I hated her. She just destroyed everything she touched, and did so because she liked the attention. That is why she's single; she's a complete arsehole. And as far as I could tell, we were supposed to hate Rose Byrne's character just because she was pretty and organised. How stereotypical. You know it was written by a woman? It was.

Tree of Life: It was a mood piece, so why didn't I like it? Well, my biggest problem was I found it to be the most self-indulgent piece of onanism I've ever seen. And I like Vincent Gallo's movies. What Malick did with this film was to miss the entire point of existentialism. He actually asks the questions himself in a disembodied voice. The imagery he uses puts the mundane in "mundane beauty". Imagine that American Beauty had been a 90-minute version of the scene with the plastic bag floating around. This is the movie. It also features Jessica Chastain. I couldn't write a post about movies in 2011 with mentioning Jessica Chastain. She was in 7 movies that came out this year, ranging from Take Shelter (which just missed the top 10) to The Help which I wouldn't watch unless someone paid me. Thing is, she's pretty awful. She's a less talented, less pretty version of Bryce Dallas Howard. Thing is, they're basically the same age and look similar-ish. They're actually both in The Help, which probably opened some sort of temporal tear in the space-time continuum.

To the list!

11/Out of Competition: Kill List

Kill List is one of the more frustrating films you'll have probably not have seen this year. That's because for the first 92 and a half minutes of its 95 minute run-time you'll be on the edge of your seat. You'll have a racing mind and eyes glued to the screen. Then. Then. The last minute addition to the list appears, the Hunchback, and you'll know what's coming. But, as Ceelo Green would ask, Why?

It must be said that the ending, unfortunately, makes perfect sense. It is the only way to answer the myriad of questions raised throughout the movie. Jay and Gal are hit men, living off the scraps of a deal gone wrong (someway that's not explained) in Kiev. Then Jay's hot-tub breaks and they go back into the game for one last contract. A staple, sure, but this is no ordinary deal, as a blood pact is involved with the delegators of the list. Even more staple, I know, but with largely improvised dialogue creating a warm repartee between the two leads and Jay teeming with a simmering, largely unrestrained menace, this is no ordinary pair of ex-military guns for hire. That Jay's secretary is his wife just adds to the strangeness of it all, as does Gal's doll-like witch of a girlfriend ("let's just say I had to shave my pubes afterwards").

So into their murky world Jay and Gal go. But why do the victims thank Jay before he kills them? What is on the DVDs that cause Jay to bring out MC Hammer and, indeed, later veer off list? How can no one else see the infection in Jay's hand? Well. It'll all make sense in the end. But... Do you want it to? Is it like a magic trick, where you want to be deceived? Either way, the jarring sprint finish certainly makes a lot more sense on second viewing. But just because it makes sense doesn't mean it's not very very out of place with the tone of all that has gone before it.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about prosthetics. This movie was made for £500,000, and has the best prosthetic effects I've seen in years. A hand-wound bleeds even under the tap. A hammer ruins one guy's entire weekend, even though we hear him talk without cutting away. It's remarkable. The thing is that having such explicit violence, the kind that makes you go "oww" just watching, has a strong negative effect on our perception of the characters. There is two things of note in Kill List: first is that Jay, who practically bursts with violence all the way through, and Gal, who doesn't, have such a charming and easy blokiness that we need to go fully into their violent world to question our role as an audience. Why are we watching such violent men? They perform for money. Notions of enjoying their company are highly questionable when we see Jay go nuts over and over, no matter how good their chemistry is in peace time. As jarring as the ending is, how can we say we are surprised? How could we not see what Jay is? The clues are all there, up on screen, explicit and uncensored. The second is why did this violence court no controversy? I read several reviews of Kill List, none of which mentioned just how vicious this movie could get. I'll come back to this for Drive, but there's a clear contrast between audience expectations: Drive stars Baby Goose and Cary Mulligan, and was heavily promoted, so the audience was warned (Empire called it "ultra-violent", it is absolutely not). The audience would find Drive, the Saturday-night-shifting-in-the-back-row-crowd. Kill List would have to find the audience, one that roots out genre or indie films. That audience largely is used to the unexpected, explicit and confrontational, so the reviewers didn't bother mentioning the violence. Think about it.

Huu-wat?: The Hunchback. Turned my entire universe on its head and ruined the film. But then again... did it?

10. Somewhere

This is the boring one. Nothing happens in Somewhere. It's very much the opposite of Lost in Translation (her worst film), in that LiT was about a wife tagging along with her husband while this is about the famous husband. Only he's not anyone's husband, he's just famous. And that's the movie. A famous guy, living in a hotel, being a celebrity.

This kind of film needs to exist. Coppola herself has said that the measured and relaxed tone of the film (there's a lot of shots that go on for a long time despite nothing much appearing happen) is an overt cue to you to watch a little closer. It's the perfect opposite of the likes of Transformers or even, I think, The King's Speech, where the whole film is trying to bring gravitas and importance to a big event, which when it happens, is as lame and damp a squib as you'll ever come across. Somewhere doesn't pretend to be anything beyond what it is, being a gentle observation of the other side of movies. If you take the time, there is a quite lovely story about a father and daughter learning how to be a part of each other's life. Just because it is subtle doesn't mean it's not there.

The reason why Somewhere works is everyone in it is eminently watchable. Dorff is really good as Johnny Marco, who could really be anyone in front of the camera in the other 10 movies on the list. He's largely apathetic and directionless, and there's an air of sadness about it all, until his daughter Cleo arrives and spends some time with him, bringing a gentle joy to his life. There's nothing much profound about their relationship, and its effect on Marco is kind of vague (he moves out of the Marmont at the end but he's presumably still a movie star). Cleo, also doesn't appear to move in with him or anything. Somewhere is happy enough to go through this without battering you in the face with some harsh monologues where the kid drops knowledge bombs all over the adults, nor does Marco turn into Professor Self-Reflection to deliver some fist-pumping speech at the end. It just takes its time to show a subtle slice of life. If David Attenborough had narrated it everyone would get it on DVD for Christmas.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about direction. Camera movements and the length of takes, without ever needing to see what the story is about or anything in the narrative, tells you exactly what kind of film you are watching. I mentioned the difference between this and Transformers. Transformers is cut together from about 1,000,000 different takes and shots, not just in terms of action scenes but even dialogue scenes are cut terribly complexly. Action movies generally are cut together with lots of cross cuts, which speed up the pace of the visual narrative. In non-action movies, frequent cuts are often used to show duplicity, or represent fractures in the narrative. By letting the camera run, firstly the tempo of the film slows considerably and, more importantly, there is less room to hide. There is enough time to take everything in, whether good or bad. Oddly, invisible edits are now increasingly being used to make scenes appear longer, such as in Children of Men. That's because the length of a take draws the audience in, as every cut is like an advertisement to blink, and makes explicit the fact that you're watching a movie. By letting the camera run, you get drawn in, whether you realise it or not. This is one of the main reasons why I enjoyed number 3 on the list so much; it is an action movie shot with an indie sense of patience.

Huu-wat: It's not really that kind of movie, but the scene where they put that latex mask on Johnny Marco's head is pretty funny.

9. 13 Assassins

Takashi Miike, Japanese director of such charming family fare as Ichi the Killer (opening titles written in real human sperm, and it gets worse from there) and Visitor Q (it opens with child-initiated incest and then gets worse from there), and director of 87 movies in the last 20 years, had a go at making a pg-16 feudal Japanese Shogunate war epic. It is both the most Miike and least Miike film I've ever seen.

The first... 40 odd minutes is a talky political movie, with elderly folk hero Shinzaemon gathering together a small band of ronin to fight the good fight against Lord Naritsugu, the mentalist brother of the Shogun, who will be moving to the shogunate to become Minister for Ruining Christmas. To underline this, there's a lot of scenes of Naristugu being a big bastard and a lot of Shinzaemon saying things like, "Sometimes I wonder at the team I have assembled here". Shinzaemon and his pals talk about honour and duty. Naritsugu uses live families for archery practice and wanders through massacres uttering bored reposts on the futility of life. He is so nasty he could be from a Miike movie, and a lot of it is genuinely upsetting. Then the assembled team embarks upon its epic quest. And woah Nelly, look out below. Did that hurt Mike? Is anyone still reading?

The rest of the movie is a big lads-own adventure, with Shinzaemon and his pal Kuranaga leading the 12 ronin and 1 feral thief through the forests to the point of ambush, where they turn a town into a death-trap in anticipation of the arrival of Naritsugu and his 70 guards. He arrives with 200 guards instead and the last half an hour is little more than explosions and the cutting off of heads. And it is AMAZING! Logic takes a bath, but I'd be amazed if several stuntmen didn't actually die during the making of this. The action is incredible, largely because it's so silly, but there's so many wince inducing moments that you won't know which end is up. Considering that Miike is best known for his violence, he's in his element with a film that's largely one extended fight scene. Remarkably it's only 16s or something, despite the fact that it features more onscreen bloodshed than a Christmas episode of Eastenders.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about subtitles. There is a common complaint that you have to read a foreign language film rather than watch it. I can abide that. A lot of the time, particularly, and I understand how racist this will sound, with Spanish films there will be mountains of text at the bottom of the screen because they speak so fast. Also, while translation is about more than turning words in one language into words in another language, there is a certain amount of cultural adaptation that can be made at the studio's request which can seriously alter the meaning of the dialogue. Låt den Rätte Komma In had new English subs for its American release that were shite compared to the original English subs in the Swedish DVD release (it is actually like watching a different, better movie with the original subs). Another good example of this is La Haine, a tough, racially charged French banlieue movie, which is so full of creole that the subs are frequently updated so that the slang is in the freshest English equivalents (the latest .srt file I found had "swag" in it). There is a scene where the characters talk about Asterix, but the subs, for a US audience at least, in the scene refer to Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Ridiculous. In 13 Assassins, Naristugu is a total bastard, but one thing the subs don't pick up is the contempt he displays for everyone else through the language he uses. While there is only one way to say "you" in English, there are several ways of saying it in Japanese, and how you say it says a lot about how highly or lowly you regard your addressee. There is no easy way to translate that, and the subs here don't try to. What I mean to say is that I understand people being wary of foreign language film, largely because I always feel that I am getting a vague approximation of the whole tale. It's also difficult to take in the whole imagery when you're focusing on the bottom of the screen, and it is often more difficult to track a narrative in text than through audio, particularly when there is a lot of exposition. It can work the other way too though, like in The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, a film I lost track of after about 10 minutes and gave up on anything beyond staring at the ridiculously pretty actress.

Huu-wat? A bit nasty this but there's a bit at the beginning which is designed to justify all the upcoming bloodshed in the audience's mind. One of Naritsugu's victims, a woman who he treated as a possession, is brought to be interviewed by Shinzaemon. She has no arms or legs, or tongue. Her escort tells her story, until Shinzaemon addresses her directly and she writes her responses using a calligraphy brush in her mouth, while moaning extraordinarily. Genuinely upsetting. Not sure why she was naked though (Hi Takashi).

8. Beginners

Ah, look at it there. Beginners is Mike Mill's second film ( I think), and his first was a big pile of self-indulgent wank (Thumbsucker). Beginners is even more personal than Thumbsucker was, being about a man, Oliver, played by my favourite actor Ewan McGregor, considering his relationship with his dying father, a man who revealed he was gay the whole time after his wife, Oliver's mother, dies. It's kind of heart-breaking, but it's also heart-warming. It has heart, essentially.

And it's a very heartfelt and hearty movie, and more than a touch sentimental. However, everyone in it is so loveable that you'll probably be too busy mopping up your mascara to notice. I seriously regret chopping those onions while I was watching it. The meet-cute between Oliver and Anna is so lovely that you sort of have to demand that they end up together and stay together forever ever. But will they? So what if she can't talk, didn't you hear that touch-tone telephone? Damn their beautiful eyes.

It's probably a very silly film. Christopher Plummer is a kindly old gay gent, who drops pearls of glistening knowledge (huh?) all over Oliver's mind-tongue (ssh), despite, it must be said, doing so with the life-long regret of a man who survived a prolonged, loveless lie to himself. Oliver's mother seemed to have also accepted her situation, emerging as some sort of frigid artiste, hence Oliver being a cautious, self-destructive lonely bear. He eventually learns to get over himself, and that's the movie. It's pretty sad in parts, considering the subject matter, but if it doesn't leave you looking for your own George Sand then you and I are very different people.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about screenwriting. I love to read scripts, to see just how much of the film is recreated from the page. When a director also writes the piece, oftentimes it is as though he/she has already seen the film in his/her head before beginning. The Beginners script actually surprised me because the dialogue between the characters seemed so realistic that I though much of it would be improvised. But no, it's actually all there on the page. Even Oliver's annoying colleagues, who I assumed were cast because they are somebody's cousins playing themselves, even just repeated their lines from the page. You may hear about guys like Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet, about whom the old adage is that they have "a good ear for dialogue". They don't; they have a good ear for speeches and proselytizing (nothing wrong with that); realistic dialogue, like you might have with your friends is the hard part. Mills does that here.

Huu-wat? It's not that kind of movie. But there's a couple of bits involving Andy that'll make you cringe.

7. Essential Killing

A near dialogue-free, Vinny Gallo mood-piece shot by a Polish in the wilderness using Irish Film Board money. Do you need to know any more? I've always enjoyed the work of Vinny G, I know he might be the kind of man who sells Kinder Egg capsules of his own jizz for $1m on the internet (in fact there's no might be about that), but he makes his own movies in a way few others would dare. He usually writes, directs, stars, shoots, scores and edits his own film (contrast that with Beat Takeshi who is exhalted for doing less than that). Few would even have the stamina to consider doing all that. This time he is just acting, but he didn't exactly give himself the week off, no. He's only amazing.

We start in the desert, where an Arab(?)/Persian(?) man (Gallo) is hiding from an American GI. Now. Here's where it gets complicated (yes, at the start). Gallo picks up an RPG and blows the guy to smithereens. The title would suggest that it was an essential killing, but would most men have done the same? Is he actually the kind of person that the GIs are there to find? It's never explained, but it's pretty clear from his ninja moves that there's more to Gallo than a beard and robes. After killing the soldier he is taken to an extraordinary rendition country and is tortured, water-boarded and tested. Then, being transported to Poland, he escapes into the frozen forestland when his truck turns over.

Jersey Skolimovski has an eye for a landscape. While Gallo is the only person on screen, nature is his adversary and also his only hope for survival. Thankfully it doesn't go all The Edge or Deliverance, because this isn't an American movie. Instead, Gallo has to survive, and does so without missing a beat, using his head as well as his +1 melee ability. His foraging in what is presumably a totally alien landscape (he's from the desert remember) is ingenious, particularly stripping the bark from a tree to eat the ants beneath. His mind goes a bit as he begins to freeze, but it's never anything less than brave and thrilling, especially when that scene happens.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about sound design. This film is largely dialogue free, and what dialogue there is comes in the form of unsubtitled generic foreign tongues, leaving us as alienated as Vinny G. Nobody has a conversation, let's say. However, it isn't a silent movie, far from it, some of the sound design in the forest, with the crunch of the snow and the whistling energy of the wind freezing in the air, is superb. The dogs and helicopters that come to get him are morphed into something gigantic in their menace, simply by the fact that there is no score or dialogue to distract from it. Dogs can be scary, man. Another thing is that Gallo does not utter a single word during the entire film, yet we still get full senses of his exhaustion, relief, satisfaction (you'll know) and fear, not only from his body language but from incidental noises. Silent film it's not.

Huu-wat? That scene. That scene. It comes out of nowhere (although it is the culmination of a natural progression), but when it happens you'll be giddier than a schoolgirl. Hint:

6. The Adjustment Bureau

When I got home from this movie I twote: "I picked a hell of a day to quit believing in true love". Despite being one of Niall McNamara's more used phrases (spec. "true love called...". That's the whole phrase), evidence of true love is pretty specious at best. In motion pictures, it doesn't happen. That's why most romanic films, even the best one, Punch Drunk Love, finishes just as the couple get together. It's all downhill from there, if they ever get to a point on the hill from whence they could fall. That sound you hear is the deafening thud of cynicism.

Ah but The Adjustment Bureau. Look at it there, with its hat on. What a lovely film this is. The best way to describe it is as "nice". I've often been told that I'm "nice" as a precursor to being rejected, so I know just how underrated a commodity "niceness" is. But this film, if nothing else, is nice.

It's about true love. Nothing more complicated or fleeting a notion than that. Matt Damon, who I don't rate (he nearly ruined Francois Pienaar fo' Gid's sike) but he's great in this, as politician who would be president, er, David Norris, were it not for him falling on his silly heart sword and ruining not only his own life, but the life of should be beau Elsie Sellas, played sweetly by Emily Blunt (as herself basically). But as this is a Philip K. Dick adaptation (or moreso reinterpretation), all is not as it seems. Men in hats gently conduct the flow of events that give direction to life. Norris and Sellas should only meet once, fleetingly, in a men's restroom (yes) and never see one another again. Only one of the hatmen spills kauphie on himself and Norris gets on Sellas' bus. They try to get together. Norris rebels against fate for 90 minutes. Roger Sterling in a hat tries to stop them.

Why it works is just HOW LOVELY IT IS, DIDN'T YOU HEAR? All romantic movies, as Paton Oswald of all people noted, are structured around the premise that the audience has a keenly vested interest in whether or not the two principals fuck one another. Here, you will demand that they do, and that you have a front row seat (and my boy Neil takin notes etc.). Everything, from the tales of fate, the decisions and their consequences are laced up and swung into your face, making it bizarrely real, especially for a movie where time-stopping bureaucratic angels read magic iPads on the bus. That's because it addresses real concerns and scenarios that you'll have had run through your head, about what ifs, and if onlys. Norris faces those questions of fate literally. And you'll never want to see two people take the Lincoln tunnel more.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about religion. America is a very religious place. Censorship is undertaken by the Motion Picture Association of America, a far-right leaning organisation that, until the 1960s, used what was called the Hays Code to judge a film's certification. The Hays Code was a ridiculous Presbyterian moral standard that heavily favoured good-old fashioned bullshit like eating your greens and saying your prayers. It is an obvious point, but the flourishing of artistic film-making, director led, in the period 1969 (with Easy Riders and Bonnie and Clyde) to 1980 (when Heaven's Gate nearly ended Paramount) came directly after the abandoning of the Hays Code in favour of a more honest, artistic and open-minded practice (the Breen Code). Anyway, The Adjustment Bureau features heavily religious themes, with the hat-wearing love haters being messengers for an omnipotent higher-power called The Chairman. The main themes are predestination and free will. But, strangely, while being seemingly Protestant (isn't predetermination one of the two differences between Catholicism and Protestantism?) in outlook, it suggests that, rather than praying or whatever (performing X action to appease an omniscient god) if we stick to our guns we can effectively bully an all-mighty power into submission and mitigation. Neat. And if he was really omniscient, he'd have known not to try to keep them apart in the first place, no?

Huu-wat: There's no single huu-wat in this movie, but Terence Stamp appears in this after about an hour, having seemingly walked straight out of Othello or something. It's a bizarre performance, totally out of pitch with everything else, and it's such a legit theatre, absurdity of Ack-ting! performance that it's hard not to laugh.

5. The Guard

Martin McDonagh wrote and directed Oscar-winning short Six Shooter, about a black-and-white train ride (ok, I haven't seen it), before going on to make over-rated Al Swearengenian black-comedy In Bruges. John McDonagh, Martin's brother, made The Guard. While John's background is in legit theatre, they could basically be the same person, as The Guard is very similar to In Bruges. More importantly, it was also the only genuinely funny film in all of 2011.

The Guard is Brendan Gleeson, a bored Galway Sergent, spending his days dropping confiscated drugs and ordering escorts from Dublin. Boring. Then a big drug operation (that's actually three men, two of whom appear to be philosophy graduates) comes to town and somehow the FBI send a single agent over to brief the locals. It's all very unlikely and my reading of it suggests that it is all in Gleeson's head, because it is just so unlikely. But you won't care. Sergent Boyle is a pretty typical Irish gombeen-savant character and the people he encounters are just larger than life enough to be believable rural Irishmen.

It is very funny, and very Irish. It ticks all the boxes: swearing, IRA cowboys, British bad-guys, city-vs-country, Brendan Gleeson loving his ma. It could only be from here, and it doesn't have an original bone in its body. But it is funny so who cares. Gleeson's guard is spectacular. I never understood why Colm Meaney and Liam Neeson went on to have big overseas careers (especially the latter who these days seems to only play characters who exist as pictures of drawings of characters he has already played in the past), while Gleeson, the most watchable and natural screen presence this side of George Clooney, seemed content to remain the big fish in a shot glass, making silly Irish movies like Perrier's Bounty and Studs (or was I the only one who saw those?). Still, the reception this got overseas (as I said, as the only genuinely funny movie of the year, thanks for nothing Jason Sudekis), maybe Gleeson could be the new Jessica Chastain.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about awareness. Movies are an artform. Most people, myself included, do not understand art. Now. Himself a film critic, Patrick Kavanagh, the famous Irish poet and, latterly, bronze canal statue, once said that criticism involves putting yourself into the movie.

Reading a movie, as it is called, involves taking in the visual cues outside of the direct action, and reading into the motivations of the character etc. to better understand the whole story. By and large, doing this ruins the film as any form of entertainment, which is why I don't have too many popular movies on my list: popular movies exist as what David Foster Wallace called "entertainments", existing outside of art. Hollywood churns out movies that exist almost entirely on a textual basis, i.e. there is no subtext. That is a main bug-bear about Hollywood remakes of old movies and foreign language films, sequels and franchising of characters: they strip all subtly out of the experience. Just look at how Let Me In, not a bad movie on its own, pales in comparison to Låt den Rätte Komma In, despite being essentially the same story. I mean, the former strips the latter of its vaguely unsettling subtext, that Eli is grooming a new custodian, in favour of... is that love or something? Fuck off. Anyway, at the beginning of the Guard, Gleeson's bored country bobby confiscates some acid. He drops the acid and the title credit shows. We see him convulse and cry out in his fever-dream. I propose that everything that happens subsequently is actually that dream. Think about it: an FBI agent in Galway? The FBI letting the local 5-oh get involved (isn't Agent Johnson coming in and taking over the cue for the original case detective to hand in his badge and go rogue, despite Downtown getting on his ass, in order to solve the case? Yes it is)? Then a guard solves the case when nobody else can? A country guard? Think about it. Don't just accept that a movie is cartoony, think about why. I could be wrong, but it's subjective, and I have already convinced at least one girl that I had never met before that I'm on to something. And isn't that all that matters: influencing the thoughts of strangers?

Huu-wat? Sergent Boyle drops some acid and convulses in his sleep. Didn't you hear?

4. Super 8

Ah look at it there (I'll stop that now). Super 8 is just one flying bicycle crossing the moonlight or, more accurately, a mash-potato mountain away from being a remake of, indeed, most of Steven Spielberg's dramatically over-rated 70s/80s kids movies (and I fucking hate The Goonies). Indeed, it is so similar that it makes a massive mistake: it's sincere. Doesn't JJ Abrams know we live in Cynical Times? Why do you think they're remaking Spiderman: the old ones are too much fun. And how come Batman doesn't dance any more?

What a preposterous complaint to have. Every review of this movie is legally obligated to roll its eyes at how sincere this film is. But fuck off, it's so entertaining you'll be too busy not caring about critics to care. Basically, Joe is a kid from a Spielberg movie: his mother died tragically, his dad wants him to stop being a wimp and play football in the fall, he's in love with a girl both twice his age and height, and, god-damn you, all he wants to do is... the make-up for movies? Maybe his dad is right. If it needed to be more cliched, Joe also wears a locket around his neck with a picture of his dead mother in it. Oh, and the girl he likes is the daughter of the man who is convolutedly and inadvertently circuitously indirectly responsible for his mother's tragically unavoidably accidental death.

But then his band of utter loser friends, led by wimpy film-hero Martin and mini-Spielberg Charles (did I mention Spielberg produces), go to shoot a ridiculously elaborate night scene for their monster movie only to have an actual monster escape from a 10 minute train crash. The alien holes up in a water tower, stealing locals, until the feds show up and take the case out of the hands of the local 5-oh, especially country guard Kyle Chandler (football in the fall Dad). Yes it is comfortably a Blockbuster Movie, but it's just so well done that I wish there would be a sequel. That and the movie that the kids shoot plays over the end credits is the actual best film of the year.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about Blockbusters. Summer movies are a bunch of old bum. Transformers. Movies based on comic books. The Hangover cash-ins. Cynical Guardianista Batman (just one dance, please). Super 8 reminds me why these movies were popular to begin with. Abrams has done so well, to not only assemble a great cast of kids, but direct them into a coherent and substantial collective performance. That's not easy. Charles and Martin especially are great, and Joe holds everything together despite being one of those prototype American central characters who exist to ground the action rather than, like, do anything. The action in it, while sparse and entirely blood-less (I think that was a critic gripe too) is spectacular. Disney's lead-idiot Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of the studio for crying in a bucket, said in an interview that the studios are making more spectacle movies (the new term for blockbuster) because they are the only way to make money. In the same interview he mentions that spectacle movies are making less money. Duh, the market is becoming saturated with them, and the higher instances means lowering creative returns, if that is even possible in Hollywood in 2012. Making less, better movies would be the ideal business strategy. Super 8, people, that's the movie.

Huu-wat: The kids are being evacuated on a bus. The alien attacks it, and Martin loses his lunch. It's actually quite a scary movie at times, but the vomit made it funny.

3. Hanna

I've already mentioned this film, when I was supposed to be talking about other movies on the list. That's how good it is. You know those made-up American dictionaries that have pictures of the thing that best describes the word? In the future, there will be American dictionaries that will have a link to Hanna's IMDB page under the entry for "entertainment". It'll be a mixed-media dictionary.

Hanna is a typical young girl coming of age comicbook action adventure movie, directed by a guy famous for Jane Austin adaptations. And it is AMAZING. Regardless of who wins the best director Oscar in the second-most watched television event of the year, no director has so confidently stamped his own sensibilities on the written material behind a film this year. This film should be awful: Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is raised in the Russian wilderness by her assassin father (Eric Bana) to be the Ultimate Killing Machine/stilted little girl (Saoirse Ronan). When ready, she (Saoirse Ronan) is to go kill the woman (Cate Blanchett) who betrayed her father (Eric Bana). Stop me if you think that you heard this one before.

BUT YOU HAVEN'T. Because Joe Wright knows how to direct coming of age tales for girls, so that is given far more attention than most other directors would have given it. Where you'd expect Wright to struggle is with the action, but it is easily one of the most percussive action movies of the year. There is a long one-take scene where Bana gets off the train in Berlin (or wherever) and gets followed for a while by some suits before getting jumped by one of those movie gang groups which have about 10 guys that attack one at a time. The length of the take really sucks you in (or sucks you out, to the end of your seat) but the face punching hits all the right pressure points too (the bloodlust gland and anterior meat-shield collateral). That the scene is scored by The Chemical Brothers just makes it all the more bizarre. A languid action scene with a techno soundtrack. Oh, Joe, you're spoiling us.

The uniqueness of this movie is what sets it apart, the confidence of the direction is what holds it together. Wright gets uniformly fantastic performances from a vastly over-qualified cast, none of whom phone in perfunctory performances. Ronan, who I haven't seen enough of to rate, is fantastic, largely because Wright gives her every opportunity to be. I mean, the scene where she gets a hotel room in Morocco and encounters electricity, TV, photography, music, everything for the first time should be silly and familiar, like a guy travelling through time and staring dumb-founded at the date on a newspaper. Instead, her freak-out and flight-reaction are brought on by Wright overloading our senses too, pulsing the living, breathing room right into our popcorn-stuffed faces. The scene where Hanna talks to her first ever friend in the caravan would have been borderline paedo shit had almost anyone else directed it. In Wright's hands it's actually quite touching and lovely. Having a capable director with indie sensibilities regarding story and character should be the new norm for all action movies. In return, the next British period piece (what Tarantino calls "That Merchant/Ivory shit") should be directed by Michael Bay or Sylvester Stallone. It's only fair.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about suspension of disbelief. One way that a movie can lose an audience is when its world isn't believable. Usually films are set in Movieland anyway, and are sold based on a ridiculous pitch that the audience buys into from the start simply by going to see it. I mean, like I said, Hanna is a coming of age child assassin movie. I'm sold, it's fine, I know it's not real. One of the reasons I didn't like Inception is that it's based on the premise that a bunch of guys collectively dream together in order to convince a perfectly innocent man that his dad did, in fact, love him so that big business can win and everyone else in the world will somehow conveniently forget that they used to think Leo Di Caprio killed his wife. I get it, it's fine. Then Nolan spent about 90 minutes trying to explain how the technology of dreaming together worked while managing to leave out everything you actually need to know (like how do they dream the machine they need to dream together into the dream?). Then he's all like, fuck that shit, and makes up a bunch of stuff ("remember when I said you kill yourself to wake up? Well now you go to purgatory for 1,000 years if you die, unless someone goes to get you (it'll just take a minute) at which point we'll have left you in agony for no reason for the whole movie, Saito") that EVERYONE BUT ME IGNORED SOMEHOW. Hanna doesn't make that mistake. Everyone is 100% committed, and that makes it believable when it's rarely anything less than unbelievable (yeah?). One area where Hanna should slip, is the characters' accents. Hanna is meant to have been raised by her German father in isolation in the Russian wilderness. So why is she clearly from Jo'berg? Bana himself, the aforementioned German dad, has the same accent as he had when playing a Frankfurt-born Israelite in Munich. Tom Hollander, who plays a suggested paedophile, does a better job of the German accent but slips into the fey, camp German accent that most people do when not doing the Reinier Wolfcastle edition. Blanchett, who is fucking awesome here, is meant to be a Texan (it's actually quite a good accent, but why didn't they just get an American?). But it doesn't matter. You won't care. You'll believe every word of it.

Huu-wat?: Hanna's first date. Check out the Spanish accent on that (Ay jus' wan'ed a keeeeesssss)

Bonus Huu-wat?: This bit: Shot Of The Year

2. Drive

The easiest film to put on the list. Drive is a largely dialogue-free existential mood piece with, what, 20pp of plot and a 100 minute run-time that was marketed as a stylish, violent, mob/gangster circuit-racing romantic thriller. Nice one, Hollywood. Hollywood has no idea what to do with movies like this, but I'm actually kind of glad is did reasonably well. It's probably the first mood-piece a lot of the Friday night, girls-about-town Ryan Gosling crowd would have seen. It's certainly a stretch from Bridesmaids.

Drive is very moody. It has a faintly ridiculous synth-pop soundtrack and a night-time, music-video hyper-stylized visual feel. Probably a solid 25 minutes of it is Ryan Gosling sitting there, motionless. But the reason why it doesn't feel like a big-screen Mad Men (boring!) is that it doesn't appear to try. It doesn't appear to care one way or the other. We can watch, if we want. It's one of the most subtle and considered films of the year, the sense of planning and rehearsal about everything, along with the chemistry, between both cast members internally, and director Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling, gives the movie the confidence and sense of solidarity that makes the whole thing believable.

Gosling is pretty good as The Driver. He does a good job of being a closet lunatic, and a reasonable job of being an out-of-the-closet lunatic. He brings a sense of menace that is somewhat mitigated against the fact that you suspect his secret special move is hugs. That of course, helps, when half of the movie is about his courtship with Casey Mulligan, who I found inexplicably attractive. Both the Driver and the movie itself are schizophrenic, as the courtship dissipates into a gangland run-and-gun movie in the second half. That the movie holds together is down to the direction. Refn, indeed is the real star of the show. He is best known for the Pusher trilogy, Danish hardcore underworld movies that I couldn't sit through because they were so miserable. The feel of the movie (i.e. the mood) is what it's all about. And the only word for this movie is cool.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about marketing. One of the odder aspects to the uniquely odd marketing for this film was that there was an emphasis on its violence. This seems odd, especially considering that it is far less violent than any big budget action movie. I have a feeling it comes back to audience expectation, like I mentioned back at Kill List. Drive has the occasional burst of cartoonish, hyper-stylized violence, but it is a Ryan Gosling movie: hugs and kisses are as physical as he usually gets. The thing is that Drive should in fact be far more violent than it is. This is especially true of the bit, shown in the trailer, when Driver kicks a guy's head in. I mean, he kicks his head right in, and you actually don't see a single frame of it. It conceals its violence rather well I thought, strange that it was an issue.

Huu-wat?: Bam! The old Fork-In-The-Eye ("Do you think it might work without the old fork-in-the-eye"? "There's always a first time".)

1. We Need To Talk About Kevin

This was an easy choice. We Need To Talk About Kevin will haunt you for days. Very few films have the power to leave you feeling genuinely ill afterwards, but this manages it at a canter. The main reason it works is because it is so well made and entertaining that you'll be riveted. While it isn't exactly a happy movie, it is beyond interesting and controversial. There is no way you won't need to talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin.

Tilda Swinton's Eva Khatchadourian (solid Armenian name there, somewhere Sufjan Stevens nods in approval) is a free-spirited author who gets knocked up by lovely bear Franklin (John C Reilly) and the result is Kevin, a snarling, sneering little monster. Kevin is a remarkable creation, seemingly intelligently vindictive and vindictively intelligent from an early age, enjoying his mother's frustration at his reticence to play, his refusal to talk, his belligerence in potty training. He's a total prick. Eva, on the other hand, feeds the beast, by fighting fire with fire, literally hitting back and trading all kinds of barbs ("Mummers used to be happy until little Kevin came along"), standing beside a jackhammer to relieve the sound of his crying. Her role in what Kevin ultimately becomes (a narcissistic nihilist) is far from distant and indirect. Ezra Miller, as the eldest, ultimately explosive Kevin is chillingly effective, knowingly goading and aggressive in a way seemingly only Eva can see (why doesn't Franklin try to discipline him after Celia's "accident"?), but really Miller is old enough to understand. Rock Duer, as baby Kevin, is good, better than one would expect from a baby, but it's really Jesper Newell, as 7 year-old Kevin, who gains grudging admiration and control from Eva by binding her in a lie far more complex than you would expect from a 7 year old, who really steals the show. The kid is terrifying, evil and vindictive. Meanwhile, he also shows the only tender scene between mother and son, when he appears genuinely regretful at sicking on the floor. It also gives Eva a rarely taken opportunity to show actual maternal instincts.

The fact that we are seeing the events from her eyes, jumping back and forth in history as she tries to rebuild her shattered life reclusively in present, post-event, times while considering Kevin's childhood for signs of her influence, means we are not getting the whole story. There are plenty of points in the narrative that don't quite stand up, like the messages we hear on her phone. And why oh why would she have another child when she fully suspects that Kevin is a psychotic (and why does the daughter's name change from Lucy to Celia half-way through?)? Kevin is clearly not all nature, and not all nurture. It's all very interesting, and strong enough, with artful and affecting direction from Scotland's Lynn Ramsey. Poor little Celia will break your little heart.

In many ways, We Need To Talk About Kevin is an amalgamation of all the good things in the other movies on this list: it is a well acted, confidently directed mood-piece with excellent child performers that can be read 100 different ways. You could probably see it 100 times and still find something new in it. It also never loses its power to affect (has the sound of a sprinkler ever been so menacingly ominous?). It's a movie that is impossible not to talk about. You need to see it, and we need to talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin.

Filmschool 101: We need to talk about feelings. The whole tale is told from the mother's perspective. She is the one who feels guilty about what Kevin has done, even if she questions her role in the birth of the beast. But, the fact that we see events from her perspective skews everything in the movie. Kevin, for example, is sneering towards her and pleasant towards Franklin, despite the fact that he needs his mother more. However, it is his father who fosters his love of archery, which appears to be his only hobby. Franklin's role is peripheral. Kevin appears in white all the time, and frequently wears the same clothes as a semi-adult that he wore as a child. This film is actually dripping in colour, mostly in red, white and blue. The red is especially vibrant, as you would expect, in spite of the fact that there is no blood in the film. The blood Eva never sees haunts her in the form of red paint thrown on her porch, and the opening scene at the Buñol Tomatina couldn't be any more ominous. It starts messily and finishes messily. Isn't the mother always left to clear up the mess when the boys are gone? The thing is, what is her role, objectively? Her feud with Kevin was definitely reciprocated and far from Kevin's sole custody, even going back to childhood when they are bound into a lie by her cowardice and guilt. That Kevin seems to quietly admire her, like when he looks jealously at her picture in the bookshop window, could be Eva's way of justifying the fact that the games between them were ultimately her fault. However, she doesn't appear to feel sorry for any of it, and the film ends with what could appear to be her seemingly trying to goad Kevin into continuing the game. It's just such an interesting film.

Huu-wat?: Mummers walks in on Kevin mid-wank. He turns, startled, then locks eyes with his own mother and continues. It says a lot about their relationship that she considers meeting the challenge before slamming the door a beat later. Ouch, my liberal sensibilities.

I done a great jorb

2011-10-25T12:30:00.003+01:00

Work. Ugh. Don’t let the recession fool you, there’s plentyof it out there. Since finishing college, I’ve had three jobs and am about tostart my fourth. By the looks of this year’s graduate recruitment here, wherenumbers are way down, students are just jumping straight on the boat, not evenlooking for work in Ireland. That’s because Ireland is pretty much a made upcountry, it shouldn’t really exist in the Real World. Mammy and Daddy, you see,have by and large escaped the recession, because they didn’t actually buy 7houses in Jerusalem, they didn’t open a manicurist on Moore Street, they didn’tbuy a gold plated 2015 Rolls Royce. They didn’t really do much of anything, butpay off their mortgage and put their kids through college by means of fee free “universities”.So when little Marissa and Josh Brennan finally get their degree in AmericaStudies and Haircuts respectively, emerging into society as “well-rounded and employable”adults, why not reward them by spending €10 grand on an all-expenses paid tripto go on the pish in Australia for a year?

Not that I didn’t try my best to do the same in Japan, butyou get my point (possibly). Alright, you probably don’t. Our parent’sgeneration still largely remembers the 80s, when their brothers and sistersleft for Britain and the US, and they remember having nothing much of anything.While many spoiled their kids, and continue to spoil their adults, if they canafford it, who cares? By and large, they are survivors, and when they got theirinvitation to Brian Lenehan’s party, they RSVPed with a “maybe next time”. Theyown their homes, and have manageable debts. They didn’t try to become tycoons,they didn’t invest in Eircom shares. They just enjoyed the comfort of their circumstance.And they will continue to survive, because they can take a decent pension, or adecent voluntary redundancy because they’ve seen it all now. The real problemis that my generation hasn’t seen it all. We aren’t survivors. It’s too easyto move back home when you need to save a few bob. It’s too easy to piss off somewhere else for a while instead of waiting for Godot. It’s too easy to phoneJoe Duffy instead of your local politician. Use your brain and think about thiscountry, how any country, works. They’re all the same economically.

What I mean is that markets work in a spectacularly simplefashion. There is no great trick to managing an economy, there is no vasthidden depth of insider knowledge required to operate successfully in it. Allyou need is awareness of the most basic points of supply and demand. If demandincreases, supply has to increase to meet that demand, and there is a briefperiod of disparity in the interim. This creates shortages or “rarity”, meaningthe object of demand increases in value. Eventually, supply will rise to thepoint when it overmatches demand, creating a surplus. This causes value tofall. Nobody in Ireland seems to know any of this. That is why we now havethousands of unemployable teachers and nurses, for example, because collegestook in more applicants as demand increased, not giving a flying fuck about thestagnant demand for the graduates they supplied. Similarly, while constructionbriefly boomed, boys left school to work on building sites, making a mint. Whendemand for their work fell, the supply remained the same, so rather than usingthe money they made to go to college and do something else they rather wentstraight to the dole queues and blamed the government for not continuing tobuild 80,000 houses a year. The government similarly faces supply and demandproblems, that’s what they mean by “budgetary adjustments”. By the time FiannaFail left us, we had a government that spent €25bn more per year than it made.This means Ireland had a demand for cash in excess of its supply of cash.Rather than lower demand by streamlining, it instead borrowed more and more.And now look at us. It’s easy to be angry, Irish angry, the type of anger whereyou carry on as normal but phone RTE to whinge. It’s more difficult to beFrench angry, where you just go and wreck up the place. It’s more difficultagain to be understanding, but Joe Duffy doesn’t do understanding.

Anyway, I’ve gone and gotten myself a new jaerb, so I figureit’s time, as someone who has had loadzajobs.ie, to impart some of the universalwisdom I’ve learned

It’s not about how busy you are, it’s about howbusy you look: right now I’m writing a blog in full view of my direct report. ButI’m doing it in word, I’ve got a A4 pad with my shopping list on it that Icontinually reference salad, turkey, ginger, Head & Shoulders, that makesit look like I’m working on something. I’ve also got a spreadsheet going that’sworking out my weekly earnings at my new job and its accumulation into mycurrent and savings accounts over consecutive 12 month periods, and I’ve putthe graphs into this word file despite having no intention of posting them inthe blog. Occasionally I’ll mop my brow (albeit with a wristband branded withthe logo of our biggest competitor). “How are things Cormac”? “I’m up to myeyes, Ezra”.

Talk as much as possible in cliches: while thisreally only applies to business environments, feel free to think outside thebox and add the low-hanging fruit to your skillset of core competencies.Alternatively, apply blue-sky thinking to maximize your leverage and hit theground running. Cliches provide enough scalability to offer an integratedapproach resonating synergy to all mission critical elements.
Attention to detail is important: be aware of this.This comes with a big NB. Your direct report will make mistakes, and it’ll beyour job to either fix them or take the blame for them. It’s not fair, but younot spotting someone else’s mistake is somehow worse than making that mistake inthe first place. So forget having excellent attention to detail. I mean that,forget about it, at your level. You need to only have it at the level of yourreports. If printing a portrait pdf in landscape isn’t considered a mistake(BUT IT IS! IT IS!), then it isn’t a mistake (EVEN IF IT IS!!!!). On the otherhand, typos are universal mistakes, so fix them instead. [Sometimes it worksthe other way, where your report will have immaculate attention to detail, andyou’ll have to keep up. I was once told in an interview that I didn’tdemonstrate attention to detail because the indents on the bullet points of my CV wereoff by one space. I could have punched that guy in the face, because I wasusing a word template called Executive Resume and have you ever tried to doanything in Word? When I got home, I wrestled with that template for 3 hours,and still couldn’t get everything to line up. Since then, Executive Resume hasgotten me 4 jobs so the jokes on… us?]
Talk around the watercooler as much as possible:this is one that’s best learned but not experienced. The more time you spendtalking to people, the less they’ll spend talking about you. Because you’ll bethere, and women only talk behind your back. Incidental things, like wearingthe same tie two days in a row and leaving or coming in to work with someone,are the fuel that stokes the flames of PURE HASSLE. Should you need water toextinguish those flames, attend your local watercooler.
If someone asks you to do something, just shutup and do it: work is work, and all jobs are ultimately the same unless you areat the top of the tree. Regardless of whether or not you wish to ascend thattree, just shut up and do your job, arsehole. If you start bitching, while theothers may appear to sympathize, as soon as you leave they’ll be wavingimaginary dicks around. Nobody cares about you. So just do your job until theytell you they don’t want you any more. Then remain up-shut, because nobodycares that you don’t have a job. Whether you do or don’t have a job, either wayyou probably won’t be happy.
Always remember: enjoy yourself.

Sharpening my neon claws

2011-09-07T16:20:00.000+01:00

A wise man once said, "gambling is the finest thing a person can do, if he's good at it". Ok, so it was Krusty The Clown's accountant but still. A lot of people think gambling is down to luck, which certainly plays a part, as it does often in sport. Another wise man, (actually it was former Cleveland Indians baseball-hitter guy Lefty Gomez) who said, "I'd rather be lucky than good". The thing is, that luck is often an illusion. As another wise man, (golf-zombie Gary Player) once said, "The more I practice the luckier I get". But often practicing gambling is kind of a bad idea, don't you agree? I can't condone it, since yesterday I realised two things about myself that I don't particularly like. The first is that, having bet €20 on England to beat Ireland just to prove a point (and indeed, to prove that point to nobody but myself), I realise that I should probably get out of Betfair. I only won another 20 quid, despite having never bet €20 on anything before. I'm not telling you what the realisation was.

There is a lot of money to win in gambling. Paddy Power, for example, started his bookies having originally made a fortune in gambling. The social responsibility aspect of it comes into the fact that while winning is addictive, losing is motivational. My right-wing sensibility manifests itself in the fact that I generally think people shouldn't be let make any decisions of their own. Because people are stupid and don't know how to do the sensible thing. Most people who lose at gambling think that the fact that they like Spurs means that Spurs will win their match with Manchester City. The emotional investment is controlling. Or they see Leeds at 6/1 to win the Challenge Cup (in a cup final the odds should really be 50:50 considering how tight they are), and consider that throwing a few quid down will give a big reward. That is, they look at the profit and ignore the market and, indeed, sporting aspect of considering why a team would have such high odds: so many people have backed one team that the bookie considers how much he can afford to lose on the favourite against the potential payout on the underdog. Basically, its a good day for the bookies when the underdog wins, because high odds means fewer people to pay out to. They might have to pay out more, but to fewer punters.

But there is a lot of money to be won. For a start, one of the first thing that a more persistant gambler will learn is that sometimes you have to back the favourite. This is actually, I think quite risky, as I have explained, because the payout is small (meaning you need a bigger stake for a smaller reward) and the personal risks are high (if the favourite loses, the house wins). The other thing is that cold hard logic can win you 2 out of every 3 bets. I know this because that's my average. And cold hard logic is my currency.

So, with that in mind, and because I'm trying to decide what to do about the Rugby World Cup, I'll give you a glimpse into the dark arts of the Gamblor. I have a system. It's nothing sinister. There's nothing fancy involved. In fact it's so simple that I'm actually going to do it in real time here, from scratch. It's very simple. There are two aspects: gut and logic. Gut is having a feeling. Alone it's no good, but it works for me (2/3s of the time). The other aspect is very simple too: team sheets, groups, match-ups, form and environment. So lets have a look.

There are 20 teams in the RWC, coming from 4 groups of 5. There are 10 established rugby nations. Immediately, half of the contests are gone from the equation. If they have no heritage, they have no experience, no grass-roots coaching, often have cast-offs and mercenaries and simply can't win. Won't win. So, the 10 teams we are left with are the Tri-Nations teams (Oz, All Blacks, Bokke), Argentina, and the 6 Nations teams (Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, France and Italy). Scotland, Italy and Argentina can't win it, they haven't got the temperament, the tradition or squads to do so. So that leaves 7. That took 5 minutes.

So, now out of these 7, lets have a quick look at how they are playing. Wales were poor in the 6 Nations, and outside of Wales aren't usually that good. Their squad is mediocre, their coach, Warren Gatland, a bit of a tinkerer, which is bad. They also have a tradition of losing to Pacific Island teams. On the other hand, they are from a rugby country. But I can't see it (that's my gut talking) based on players, form, everything, so goodbye Wales.

Now to use the gut. Ireland won’t win it, not good enough.Simply in terms of talent and coaching, Ireland is behind most of the teams inthis tournament. A solid core of talent exists, but they are supplanted byfossils who are picked despite seasons of diminishing returns. Some mandatorypicks, like Donnacha O’Callaghan, Keith Earls or Dennis Leamy, have never shownanything remotely near international standard. Earls has been an utter disasterbut he still was picked ahead of Luke Fitzgerald. Luke might be a shadow of theplayer he was before he broke his leg, but despite forcing the odd pass, he hasshown the ability, call it natural ability, to break the line and cause seriousdamage. And he’s a finisher. Earls is good at falling off tackles and kickingthe ball to the other team when a simple pass would put a team-mate under theposts. But I digress. Lets have less Munster rugby and more not betting onIreland. Oops, another digression.

Now. That leaves just five teams: Australia, England,France, All Blacks and South Africa. On a game-by-game basis, you might get afuller idea of a path to the final, etc. That’s because, a simple thing toremember, you should never bet on a match before you see the teamsheets. So we’llhave to do more sleuthing and gut-trusting (*giggles*) from this far out. Thatmeans what? Break out a calculator and an adding machine? No, son. Simplefor/against tagging. Lets go.

Australia

+Quade Cooper

+Win when it matters

+Can impose their game on anyone

+Digby Ioane

+Rocky Elsom

+Confident after Tri-nations win

-Small pack

-Won’t beat All Blacks twice in a row

-Kamikaze rugby won’t beat a structured team

England

+Johnny Wilkinson

+Enormous team

+Structured and imposing

+Deep squad

+6Nations champions, but with the extra motivation of notwinning the Grand Slam

+Manu Tuilagi

+Great pack

+Disciplined

+7,000 miles away from the abhorrent English media

-Shower of benders

-Coach is a monobrowed bastard

-Lord Mike Tindall

-Boring and lacking in a plan B

-Losing Grand Slam match shows lack of cutting edge when itmatters

-Occasionally roll-over and play dead

France

+Most talented and dynamic team in the competition

+Play some unstoppable rugby (when they’re bothered)

+Most dynamic pack

+Can grind out a win if they need to

+Win when it counts

+Always beat the All Blacks

-Would be even more talented if they had brought their best15

-Coach is a lunatic

-As likely to win by 30 as they are to lose by 30

-Temperament is patchy at best

-Poor discipline

All Blacks

+Dan Carter

+Usually the best coached team in the world

+Like to throw the ball around

+Impose themselves

+Home advantage

+Sonny Bill Williams

+Richie McCaw

+Apparently immune to the laws of rugby union

-Second string is pretty rubbish

-Revert to type when behind

+/-Incredibly undisciplined at the breakdown (but get awaywith it most of the time)

-Weight of expectation

-Biggest chokers in world sport

South Africa

+Biggest pack

+Seasoned and experienced

+Return with a lot of the team that won the cup 4 years ago

+Jaques Fourie

+Most imposing team in the sport

+Always have a plan B

-Are playing terribly at the moment

-Coach is an absolute joke

-Morne Steyn doesn’t do much beyond kicking goals

-Their old guys are pretty fuckin old

-No team has ever retained the cup

Right. So by the above basis, we have to make a decision.First of all, it must be noted that gut also comes into this part, but playinga lesser role: not all + or – points are equal in value. For example, the AllBlacks have the massive minus point of being “Biggest chokers in world sport”.I say this because it is categorically true. No team exhibits the form they doin the years between world cups, yet they have yet to win the cup in the professionalera, while South Africa have won half of the world cups they’ve played in, andpoor forgotten Australia have played in more finals and won more cups than itsmore vaulted neighbor. England has contested both of the last two finals,winning one. All Blacks haven’t even made the final since 1995. All those greatplayers (Howlett, Cullen, Carter, Williams, McCaw, Smith etc) have neveractually played at the pinnacle of rugby. This year they might, but my gut saysthat the weight of expectation and the chokers tag, especially since they lostthe Tri-Nations final last weekend (and badly), tells me to forget it. That andthe fact that their price is too low to make the risk worth my while.

South Africa is a tough one to rule out entirely. They areTHE world cup team. After the group stage was half over 4 years ago I told alland sundry that no one was going to beat them. Simply, they are the toughest,most disciplined and structured team in the world. They just batter teamsaround the pitch sometimes, then at others fling it wide and go around you. Itcan be completely unstoppable. However, the current coach is a moron, and theway that they are playing is too one-dimensional at the moment. How they canpersist with Morné Steyn at 10 and Jon Smit at 2 is insane, when Patrick Lambieor Butch James are far superior (and they can let Francois Steyn, Ruan Pienaaror Butch James kick goals, since that’s Morné only forte) to Morné and Bismarck DuPlessis is the best hooker in the world. Silly. So it’s doubtful they’ll becomethe first team to ever retain the cup.

So what about England and Aus? Aus are the Tri-Nationschampions, England the 6Nations champions. That’s coincidental. Aus has had agood year, with Queensland winning the Super 15 too. A lot of this is down toQuade Cooper, who is a genius at 10, albeit in the mercurial, chaotic sensewhere anything can happen, rather than the smooth game controlling genius whocan get the backs moving or get the other team retreating. I mean, he’s more FreddieMichalak than Johnny Sexton. England has had a good year, and is capable ofbeating any of the Southern Hemisphere sides. They are also a smart cup rugbyteam, winning at any cost. But then again, they got blown away by Ireland inthe Grand Slam match on March 19^th (worst day of my life by theway). Perhaps that was an aberration. They are gritty and grindy. That’ssomething that World Cup winning captain and disrespectful gormless Neanderthal/coachMartin Johnson has instilled. It’s a pretty close call between England and Aus.

Then you bring in France. As unpredictable as they are andthen aren’t and then are again, they can and frequently do beat everyone andeverything, occasionally themselves. There were plenty of surprises in theirsquad, but it still managed to be mightily impressive. And if one man goes down they have usuallygot two more to take their place (like Stalin). They can play kamikaze rugby,which is pretty but suicidal, or grind out a win by continually booting theball through the uprights like a malfunctioning Newton’s cradle. I can barely parsehow much I hate French rugby, but you know, this might be their year. Havingthe advantage of playing All Blacks in the group will stand to them well.Everyone else who plays them will do so in a do-or-die.

So lets look at the draw for the three teams that are left.Aus has it worst of all, with the likelihood that they will make it to theSemi-final without having to play anyone at all (Ireland and Wales? Really?).That means they will either face France or All Blacks cold, and they won’t beateither of them (they defeated both in the most recent meetings and will notrepeat against retaliatory blows). England is in a similar, though more bleak,boat. If England don’t win their group by about 20 points they have no reasonplaying rugby. But then they emerge into a game with either France or AllBlacks. Both will be tested, having just played the other. If they get overthat it’ll be South Africa waiting. Now, getting over France or the Blacks inthe quarters will likely put them into the final against either France or theBlacks. No way will England run a gauntlet of France, South Africa and AllBlacks. Now that leaves France. The thing is, I’ve just talked myself into supportingthe All Blacks. My gut says the Blacks won’t win it, but looking at their groupand path to the final, they’ll have revenge on their minds the whole waythrough. Could it be that this will be their year?

Still the fact remains, their price is too bad to justifybacking them. I never said I would figure out who would win the world cup, Ijust said I’d figure out who I would back, using my patented gambling system. Inthat case, France is my pick. But it’s unlikely that the French will win it.Luckily for me, I prefer the cheaper thrills of backing a team to win a gamethat’ll take place in a few hours, and as such, knowing how sport is unpredictableand that on a game-by-game basis the opportunity to pick a genuine contender,as I did 4 years ago, increase, I think I’ll hedge my bets and stick to what Iknow, i.e. who will win between Ospreys and Leinster (Ospreys). Conversely,prices go down as the competition goes on. And as a result, I won’t actually bebacking a team to win the tournament at all.But at least you know who I would back if I did.

My Rugby Day*

2011-07-31T11:47:00.007+01:00

Today I got up at 8.30 and watched a rugby match. That ended with me writing this at 9, having watched sport all day. Here is my recap.

Tri-Nations Series: All Blacks - Springboks

The first match was a pretty poor affair, with the Blacks winning comfortably 40-7 and running in 6 tries. It was good to see them play well, because when they do there's nothing like it, but they won't take too much from it. Bokke were missing pretty much everyone from their pack and have an idiot for a coach in Peter De Villiers. De Villiers is, infamously, the first black African to manage the team, a team, remember, where black players were actually not allowed until 1995, and were so racist nobody was allowed to play them until apartheid ended that same year. Fuckin hell. Anyway, the guy is an idiot, picking Jon Smit as captain and hooker, when he should be neither. This means he actually bumps Bismark Du Plessis to the bench, despite the fact that the guy is an actual beast. He's enormous. Bizarrely, Smit's club does the same, and nobody seems to understand why. I know he's a world-cup winning captain but coaches, like their players, need to have a ruthless streak, an edge to them. And cutting the captain because he's past it might be a difficult decision, but it's not one Pete would have difficulty defending.

Anyway, despite how bad Bokke were, the Blacks were pretty impressive, particularly Dan Carter, a man who has now scored 1200 international points. More virtuously, one time when he was taking a kick and the camera came up close into his face and my mother said, "what? a handsome rugby player?". Thanks mum (Carlow rugby 1998-2004, Portlaoise League 2005). They also showed off their new kit. Surprise! it's all black. No, it's actually not, it's got a shit white bit on the back of the neck, like they all lay down on some shaving foam. The new world cup jerseys are rubbish all around though. Anyway, all that is of course arbitrary, because they won't win the world cup. The Blacks are always favourites. Anyone who has ever spoken to a kiwi will know the closed-mind arrogance and contempt of the average All Black fan on the subject of rugby. But fuck them all, because the Blacks always blow it. The reason why Bokke and Australia have won two world cups (against the Blacks 1, in the first world cup back in 1987 in New Zealand, with England the other winner) is because they know how to get it done. The Blacks are the Kildare of rugby (although that's grossly unfair to the Blacks ((see below))). Bokke have a plan B, and generally will run over you to win. Blacks will throw it around all day, play suicidal, error strewn rugby that can come off and look beautiful sure, but when they play a disciplined, structured, physical team, they can be beaten, and in the world cup, they only have to lose once. And usually they do. Still, they won this fairly handy.

Moment of the match: has to be Cory Jane's first try which was just ridiculous. It's very rare for a team to score off back-to-back possessions, i.e. score and then score again with the other team only kicking-off in between. But that's what happened. I'd say that the rarity of it was what caught Bokke out, only it was really the genius of Dan Carter, who was involved twice, and the pace of Cory Jane.

NRL Round 20: North Queensland Cowboys - Penrith Panthers

To Australian rugby league** next, with the Cowboys, who play in Diary Farmer's Stadium (seriously) in Townesville (even more seriously), taking on Penrith. I say I watch a lot of NRL, but really I only watch the teams that I like or that are entertaining, so it tends to be Dragons or Rabbitohs (which I like) or Broncos or Tigers (which I kind of hate but enjoy on an appreciative basis). So verily I did watch two teams I've only ever seen as opponents previously. It was an odd match too, taking forever to get going before the 33rd minute when Luke Walsh decided to ruin the match for everyone by getting sin-binned. Whatever about the effect of losing a man in rugby, it's multiplied in league by about 20. A team with 12 men will generally concede a few tries in the 10 minutes they're down a man. Oddly enough, Penrith came out only 12-6 down from this period, scoring their best try of the game too. So, I thought, this is pretty good stuff.

The second half was even better, in the balance the whole way through, until the Cowboys finally finished Penrith off. It was odd to see two teams, one just outside the top 4 but definitely going to the 8-team play-offs, and the other just outside that 8, with no personal interest in the outcome. It made for a very entertaining game. Few big names on show, but still some good players. Neither team appear to have anyone to kick goals, and there was nobody who made the crowd come alight either, so it was very much so a weird game for a neutral to come into. The difference between the teams was a tiny aboriginal man too, which was neat.

Moment of the match: Luke Lewis knocking himself the fuck out (khtfo). Luke, who is one of the three Panthers players I had heard off before the game, is a tremendous athlete. As a kick went through the in-goal (the try scoring area), he chased after it, leaping on it just as it crossed the end-line into touch with both hands. It's a ball, so he naturally kind of rolled off it, and then landed face-first on the turf, sliding ignominiously into a padded advertisement with his arms at his side. It wasn't as impressive as when Sam Tomkins somehow scored a try while unconscious against Bradford (video here is highly recommended, although he lies on the ground with his eyes open for a while. When I saw it, live, I thought he might actually have died. If he had scored a try while dead maybe people might like him, but he was only unconscious so everyone, including the England fans continue to boo him, the cheating shit), but it was supremely athletic and really unlucky. And highly ignominious, which makes my schadenfreude acceptable.

Currie Cup: Natal Sharks - Free State Cheetahs

Currie Cup rugby is by far the most enjoyable rugby after the Heineken cup. It is the provincial cup competition of South Africa. Rugby in South Africa is like nowhere else, and that's probably a good thing. The HSE wouldn't be able for it anyway. Saffirs are impossibly large and athletic specimens, and rugby is something of a way of life there. I mean, they were forced to play with themselves for years, with tours not allowed until apartheid ended as I mentioned above. Once apartheid ended, if I remember correctly, Morgan Freeman told a short Bostonian to wen thuh wirld kep, which he did and everyone immediately forgot about the last 100 years of South African history. South Africa play rugby like they hate the game, their opponents, their team-mates, themselves. They just smash into one another, throw hundreds of bodies into rucks, compete for everything by being the biggest, the strongest and if necessary the fastest. Their teams are populated by Gordon D'Arcy figures who are so busy running though you that they miss big gaps they could run into. And by gods is it nearly the best rugby there is.

So this game was pretty explosive, even for Currie Cup, with more than a point a minute scored. Natal, who wear an awesome black and white jersey with red trim that seems to sum up South Africa pretty well, play in Durban, in a stadium call The Shark Tank (th' shaak t'ank' in Afrikaans) which is like no other I've ever seen. There is no depth to the stands in the way that there are in other stadia, so each tier comes out to pitch-side (this photo gives a good idea), so the stadium is kind of like a box rather than a bowl. It just looks ridiculous, and I find it strangely intimidating. It's called the Shark Tank because Natal are the sharks, you see. Until 1995, when the game went professional and Super Rugby began (and apartheid ended), they were call the Banana Boys, but they rebranded to stop the school-girlish giggling. Free State used to be call The Cats, but they changed to Cheetahs too. I don't really know why, because I wouldn't fuck with a cat. That's a weird thing about team names, there's loads of Wildcats (Wakefield, Kentucky, every peewee team in Springfield) and Tigers (Western suburbs, Leicester, Detroit, Missouri, Auburn, Clemson) and even some made-up cat creatures (Cincinatti Bearcats?) nobody just goes with the house cat. Cats are all bananas, boy. Free State used to be called the Orange Free State, until the central govenment, based in one of those horrible bureaucratic new towns, Pretoria, decided to distance the area from the Orange bit of its history. What that meant was that it became illegal to wave the Orange Free State flag, bizarrely resulting in the barely comprehensible incident where a black man was thrown out of a Bokke game for doing just that. In 2010! The guy was black, waving a flag that was supposed to be a sign of oppression against his own people, at a sport that black people were banned from playing for 100 years in support of a team, the very symbol of which is a byword for apartheid. And they kick him out. Welcome to Political Correctness.

Anyway, the game was pretty great, with Natal running off to a 31 -17 lead at half time after some amazing long-distance tries, and plenty of invention from mercurial French git Freddie Michalak. Michalak clearly enjoys Currie Cup because, firstly it shows, but he also asked to be released from Toulouse before the semi-final of the Top 14 to go and play in it. I guess he still got a medal, but guys who want to be there are invaluable to any team. Natal are hugely impressive, especially Freddie, Stefan Terblanche, Craig Burden and Keegan Daniel. Just look at those names! Even guys with boring first names get amazing surnames (Ross Skeate, Trevor Nyakane) and vice-versa (Ryno Benjamin). Even boring names are made better by spelling (Riaan Smit). Cheetahs might have lost but they win best name for Sias Ebersohn.

Despite going in behind, Cheetahs really chased hard in the second stanza as the Sharks went a bit limp. Cheetahs were lucky to be in it, being awarded a try by the video-ref despite the fact that Boom Prinsloo clearly dropped it. That lifted them, and they came out all guns blazing in the second half. Sharks were probably happy with 5 tries in the first half, so they had nothing to play for, but Cheetahs got back to just 6 points with 5 minutes to go and the score at 40-34. Freddie scored a penalty to push it back to two scores but Cheetahs could have won a bonus point by losing by less than 8. Naturally, having chased so hard to get back, the last kick of the game would have done just that but Ebersohn missed. Typical. Best game of the weekend.

Moment of the match: This is a tie, between Sibusiso Sithole's try and Boom Prinsloo's concussion. Sithole's try was ridiculous. Cheetahs had the ball in the Natal 22, but a big-bopper had the ball, some fat scrum-capped guy so I guess it was WP Nel, had the ball which is bad news for everyone. His offload was so easy to read that I spotted it from my stool in Dublin. Turn over, the sharks spread it wide and it comes to Sithole off a pop-pass, still inside the 22. He explodes through a tiny gap, fending one and beating another with the happy feet and just goes away, going 80 metres in a blink. The guy has serious pace, and there's no substitute for that as Johnathan "Jiffy" Davies would say. Oddly, Cheetahs full-back Hennie Daniller wasn't far behind and never gave up although there isn't a man alive who would have questioned him if he did. Sithole gets bonus points, as does Freddie, for wearing his socks around his ankles.

Boom Prinsloo's knock out was kind of innocuous, he took a big hit despite being the defender. I think it was Keegan Daniel, who is one hell of a player, who just went over him. Don't let Boom's name fool you, he's actually a giant of a man. He was probably too big to fit on a stretcher, although I'd imagine Saffir stretchers are pretty big, so he was walked off by two physios. He nearly collapsed about 5 times and was dragging his feet. It was a pretty bad one. Luckily for Cheetahs they just brought an equally impressively named replacement, Herkie Liebenburg, from the bench.

GAA Quarter-Final: Kildare - Donegal

Don't let any of the reaction, including my own, fool you, this was a terrible game of football. Too many wides, too many aimless passes, too many soft frees. What it was, however, was enormously exciting. Drawn games usually are but this one was because extra-time was great for once. Kildare did have a goal controversially ruled out, but FUCK KILDARE. They weren't too pushed when Meath had an identically controversial goal disallowed. In both instances the media decided that it was "clearly" a goal, and should have been allowed despite the fact that you need to be able to tell whether a player has arrived into "the square", an abstract 3-dimensional space marked by a 2d line on the ground, after a ball traveling at pace through the air enters into that same abstract concept. It's often easy, but O'Connor's disallowed goal was as clear as mud. Kevin McStay, who is the sole black-spot in the entire world of GAA analysis, claims he stopped running before the square, but he CLEARLY didn't! No way did he. Then McStay decided that usually when the ball hits the post it kind of resets the square ball rule. Well, maybe in Crazyton. This is the same madness that caused him to, rather embarrassingly, declare that Bernard Brogan's controversial free at the end of the Leinster semi-final should only be given if it was "a hell of a foul". No Kevin, it should just have been some kind of foul. The fact that Kevin McStay has no Celtic Crosses means he wasn't the footballer that some of his colleagues were, but this kind of subjectivity has no place in the game, because legislation has to be concrete. But I digress. I dislike McStay is the point.

Kildare tend to lose in a bleeding-heart fashion every year. They conceded a controversial goal in the All-Ireland semi last year against Down. They lost to Dublin on that Brogan free. But the thing is that these things are largely arbitrary. You see, Kerry, Cork, Tyrone never lose controversially. That's because they don't care about things they can't control, such as poor refereeing decisions, they keep their mind on the task. Kildare had a goal disallowed early in the second half, when there was plenty of time to go, and immediately conceded three points, allowing Donegal to capitalise and equalise in that order. They then scored again and went ahead, and after Kildare leveled, scored a goal of their own though sub Karl Lacey, with his first touch. This all happened in the 10 minutes after the goal. Kildare just fell to bits. It looked like they dropped their heads and said, "here we go again". Donegal didn't score in the last 12 minutes and Kildare barely scraped a draw off the back of two very soft frees and a fluked point from James Kavanagh. Hardly the stuff of champions.

In extra-time, Kildare, who had fought back to draw were in the perfect position to push on and win, and we had heard all year about how fit they are. And of course they went three points ahead, usually a winning lead in ET. But then they went three points behind in the second half of extra time, as Donegal, who have to run their socks off to carry the ball all the way from their defence to their two-man half forward line, came storming back. Ok, Kildare did level again, and most people would say a draw would be fair, but the point from Kevin Cassidy that won it for Donegal was from the left sideline, on the 45 metre line, a full 65 metres from the goal, and he kicked it with the outside of his left foot! It might be the single greatest point I've ever seen, and I include Gerathy's miracle against Dublin, Maurice Fitzgerald's sideline ball against Dublin and Padraig Clancy's Leinster winner for Laois from a full 70 metres. It was just fucking incredible. And Donegal didn't deserve it any less. I know their blanket defence is like the jab in boxing, but still it's up to the other team to figure out a way by it and they haven't managed it yet.

The other thing is, that at the end of the day, all the whinging done about Kildare is moot. In every situation, against Down, Dublin or Donegal, at best Kildare deserved a draw. I don't think most teams talk about being robbed when they were never ahead (against Down or Dublin), or when they could have won the game three times but couldn't stop the opposition getting back into it (against Donegal). You know? I mean they had a goal disallowed when they were winning by 3 points. 6 points is easier to defend, sure, but they still let Donegal get 3 points ahead from that position. Why would anyone call that being "robbed"? I think Donegal punished that wastefulness, and that's the sign of a team with an edge. Kildare are too self-absorbed, I imagine due to an odd media idiosyncrasy that includes them as aristocrats of the game when they have won 2 Leinster championships and 0 All-Irelands in the last 80 years. They aren't owed anything, they have to earn it. Donegal did that.

Moment of the match: Emmet Bolton's dive. He ran into Ryan Bradley and went down like he had either been shot in the face or seen too many movies. It was ridiculous. When they showed the replay there was an audible groan from the crowd (replays are shown on the big screen at the game). It was, in a word, pathetic and I'm glad at how it was ignored by the officials and then dismissed by the crowd, because that shite has no place in any sport much less gaelic games. This isn't tennis, it's a physical contact sport. It was however indicative of the shite Kildare were pulling all day, as if you needed another example. In the commentary, Kevin McStay chimed in with, "ballet lessons". What has ballet got to do with falling down? Marty brought sanity to proceedings with his follow-up, "Hollywood beckons".

*I didn't just watch rugby

**League is a different "code" of rugby, with its own set of rules. What happened is that rugby was an upper-class sport in England when it was first associated, much as it still is to a certain degree everywhere that plays it today, and as such there was no need for players to be professional. They could afford to spend time playing rugby recreationally. When the first clubs began to spring up, the physical nature of the game, which up until the 90s was largely a posh form of fist-fight (it remains a largely provincial eye-gouging academy in France today), clubs were formed in coal-mining and industrial towns where manual labour was the order of the day. The thing is that the players for these clubs couldn't afford to take a day off from the pit to play rugby. Thusly did begin a rift in the original rugby union as the chairmen of working-class clubs pushed for professionalism. The posh twats in the union denied this, and in 1870 in Huddersfield the rugby league was formed, simply as a professional version of the union (rugby union, the other code and most commonly known code of rugby didn't become a professional game until 1996). Over the years however, as the league clubs tried to attract crowds sufficient to sustain the clubs as professional bodies, league slowly began changing the rules. Now. This was not done arbitrarily: League needed to evolve as a more entertaining form of rugby. League today plays with no set-pieces. This means no line-outs or competitive scrums. In rugby, the scrum is a mess, often taking more than 10 minutes in total over the course of the game, meaning that one eighth of a rugby match is spent watching a training drill. The fans don't like it, but when you show them the opposite, the league scrum where 6 players engage in a scrum, most barely even bend over, for all of 5 seconds and they're off playing rugby again, rugby fans don't like that, call it "a betrayal". But do you want to see rugby or not? The set-pieces are also a hiding area for poor teams, as referees often don't seem to know the rules (look at Wales try against Ireland in the 2011 6 Nations where Wales got away with breaking pretty much every rule in the book about line-outs) and despite the presence of video-referees they never use them in the scrum, where the referee often is standing on the wrong side to see what's wrong. I mean, look at the 2011 ERC Heineken Cup final, where Northampton scored 3 tries and 22 points all off the back of their scrum. In the second half, Leinster fixed their scrum and Northampton didn't even score. Now, I know it says a lot about Leinster that their coaches are so smart and concise that they changed the entire match in 10 minutes at half-time, and also about how good their front row is to not only stem the tide but go on to dominate the scrum in the second-half, including winning the penalty that put Leinster ahead for the first time in the game off the demolition of Northampton's scrum. But it also shows that a very limited team can achieve total dominance from having a good set-piece. I know that the number of scrums in the first-half of that match was extraordinary, but still, when it was taken away, Northampton had nothing. More interestingly, however, is that the means by which Northampton achieve their dominance in the scrum is to break two fundamental laws of the scrum: firstly by "popping-up" or coming out of the scrum, which is illegal for every other team on the planet but not them for some reason; and secondly for pushing the scrum upwards, in effect trying to force a pop-up. They don't actually win scrums legally is what I'm saying. How Leinster indeed turned the scrum around was by not pushing. Anyway, basicially, what I'm saying is that league removed the set-piece to make the game about which team is better on the field. The other major change is that in league the play is broken into "sets of six", which is a similar mechanic to basketball's 24 second shot-clock, whereby the team in possession can only be tackled a maximum of 6 times before handing over possession. This creates more urgency and means more running rugby, removing the kick-tennis that can happen in rugby, and also interestingly means more tries. There is an average of 5 tries per league match in England, against 3 in rugby in England. As I said, it has to entertain. Also, the sets of six dynamic removes the ability of a team to just keep possession all day and win by "anti-rugby". Munster were the best anti-rugby team of all time, winning two Heineken Cups by just not letting the other team play. It worked, but I absolutely hated it, because it wasn't about which team is best, it's about having the ball and continuously diving on the ground and leaving the ball in the ruck forever. It was like that in league until only the 1960s, where the famous St.George club in Australia, winners of 11 consecutive premierships, were so good at keeping possession that they were the only team to touch the ball in an entire half, the opposition only kicking the ball to them after they scored. It was then the League brought in sets of 4, then 5, then 6, and it really works. Anyway, what happens in rugby? One team will run around for a while and eventually run out of ideas or make a mistake giving the ball back to the opposition, it's actually rare for a team to reach 6 phases or more. Just because league is more structured, doesn't mean it's all that different at the end of the day. Also, having the tackles clean means that the "ruck" is clean, the act of recycling the ball when a tackle is complete. In rugby the ruck is the primary area where penalties are conceded, because there are about 50 rules and referees and players only vaguely seem to know what they are. In league, the guy who is tackled gets up and rolls the ball behind him while the defending team retreats 10 metres. Clean as a whistle, Homer. So there you go. League is the Professor Xavier of rugby, the misunderstood and feared evolved relative. And I thoroughly, despite the dismissive tone of this footnote, love them both. I just think that rugby needs to evolve too.

In Defence of Movies I Hate

2011-07-29T21:18:00.007+01:00

Clocks, as the (presumably late) great A Junkie Named Mark once opined, interfere with your ability to tell the time. Time, he has reasonably deduced, is all subjective and every person perceives it different (sic.). Still Fred Savage's finest work. Anyway, I've spent most of my life alone and, as such, despite not (quite) being 25, I feel like I've been around forever. Life is boring when you've got nothing, nothing to do, no one to talk to, and no where to go. So naturally, I've always had a soft spot for motion pictures. They, at the very least, will waste a good 90 minutes of your life. This is time you'll never get back. Good or bad, it's gone. But why would anyone ever want to go back and live through the same 90 minutes again? For whatever reason? No regret can be that bad. I've always thought that shame is mildly self-indulgent: chances are, if you make a massive mistake, even taking the worst mistake you ever made, and you were given the chance to go and fix it you wouldn't. You would relive it, because you can take comfort in the horrible weight of disappointment and frustration with yourself that comprises shame. Don't assume that there's no vanity in self-loathing. The past is gone, and whatever decision you make has occurred. I know this because second chances are as rare as hen's teeth, but whenever I get one I blow it just the same as the first.

Tuesday, I saw Tree of Life. You see, I've seen loads of movies where "nothing happens". Some of my favourites indeed, like The Station Agent, Somewhere or A Serious Man, have "nothing" happen. Now, never has a cinematographer pointed a camera at "nothing". Never. What people mean when they say that is, firstly, "I'm a fucking moron" and secondly, "there was no trick". Cinema is like magic you see, I think. Not in that it's magical, but in that the audience is played down to and enjoys it because they get to be involved emotionally. Allow me to explain: magic is, of course, not magic. If you saw someone being cut in half any other day of the week, you would call the five-oh. But a magician can do it on stage, because you know it's a trick. He/she will play it up, we know it's a performance and go with it, he cuts someone in half, of course not, but look at her, she's in two! Then he puts her back together! Amazing! How did he do it? But of course, you don't want to know because if you really think about it, it's pretty mundane and disappointing. It's especially disappointing that you can't figure out something that's so obviously a trick, and therefore, how easy it is to trick a room full of self-aware, cognizant creatures. Cinema is the same. You know Sally will be with Harry by the end. You know that the Autobots will return to their Ford Mustang form with the Decepticons vanquished. Batman wins just because. Bruce Willis was in a wig all along. You didn't care, but 25 pretty pictures flickered across your eyelids every second for two hours and you're satisfied enough. Often, when you think about a film that surprises you, you end up with plot-holes everywhere, until nothing makes sense. Take the Usual Suspects, Fight Club or Terminator. Inception is the best one. I thought it was a barely sufferable piece of shit but people went on and on about how smart it was. But if you actually think about any of it, it's a completely incomprehensible waste of time. I mean, it spends an hour explaining the mechanics of going into a guy's head to collectively dream with a bunch of other people. Ok. Look, I knew you were going into heads from the trailer, I'm going with you. Don't explain it; IT'S NOT FUCKING REAL! So because it isn't real, the explanation doesn't make any sense, because it's the explanation of something someone made up. It explains that if you fall or kill yourself while asleep you'll wake up. Then 30 minutes later, if you die in the dream you go to limbo (is that bad? YOU DIDN'T EXPLAIN THAT PART). That's inconsistent, so it doesn't make sense. And they use a machine to dream together, that is never even mentioned even though it's right there in front of you, and not only that but they somehow dream this machine into the dream so that they can use it there to go into another dream within the dream. That's a pretty basic mechanic of Inception, isn't it? Why not explain that bit. If they held up the machine and said, "why that's the Bessemer Converter", nobody would have batted an eyelid, instead they just hoped you wouldn't notice. I noticed Christopher. Basically, what I'm saying, is that the only way you could find Inception to be an intelligent film is if you yourself are stupid. There it is. You found it intelligent because you didn't pay any attention. I mean, the debate about the ending is a good example of this. The top spins at the end, it doesn't fall over. If it falls; he's awake, if not he's asleep. It doesn't fall. It's just spins. When we cut there was an audible groan from the audience. How long would it take for you to get the picture? If it spun for 5 minutes? 10? 100 years? I guarantee if the last 10 minutes had been that top spinning you would still have gotten complete idiots at the edge of their seats waiting for it to fall. And that's because they are so taken in by the trick that they forget it isn't real, it has no value, intrinsically or otherwise. It's about how it makes you feel for a period of duration on a given day and that's all. To boil a passion of mine, and an entire economy, down to that may seem glib but I ask you a question friend: have you ever seen a movie you absolutely love, your favourite film even, on TV and just felt like you're not in the mood for it? See.

Now. Tree of Life is the first film I've ever seen, and I thought about this for half an hour as I walked home alone Tuesday night, where nothing happened. I thought this while breathing through my nose. I tried as hard as I could, pulling as much of it from my memory as I could, but I just couldn't think of anything notable in it at all. It has pretensions towards... something. I don't know what. Basically, Tree of Life is a Terrance Malick film, about (if that's the correct term) this guy, I don't know his name so I'll call him Sean Penn, whose brother is dead. He thinks back to his childhood in Waco, Texas because why not? For some reason, we also see the beginning of the world and a really badly researched beginning of life up to the extinction of the dinosaurs (in about 5 minutes). The whole thing is this big self-indulgent bollocks. There is no connection between any of the elements, but they're all there so what do they mean? Chances are you're looking for meaning in some guy's masturbatory fantasy. I genuinely think this is the most self-absorbed film I've ever seen. I mean, if you're going to rip off imagery from 2001:A Space Odyssey you need to frame it in something interesting. But I've seen 2001. I love 2001. 2001 is one of, if not the, greatest film I've ever seen in terms of artistry. Tree of Life is pointless. The biggest problem is that it shows a period from Sean Penn's childhood (where I actually don't know which child was supposed to be him, but it didn't matter because there's no reason for Penn's character to be in it) that appears to be randomly chosen. Nothing happens in it, nothing of note at all. It's just a week in his childhood. Is that meant to be artistic? Lets have a go: Is it that this news that Penn gets makes him remember the boring bits of his childhood, thereby upgrading them to poignancy as the memories he takes solace in when the sun is gone and it's blacker than black? Or is it that he considers all the life that there has ever been and if it hadn't been for a simple act of kindness from a dinosaur millions of years ago none of us would even be here today, we're all the product of a cosmic-scale game of chance? Or is it because the film considers the past, present and future of our lives, raising questions such as why are we here? isn't there more than this? is there someone watching over us? or are we all alone in the universe?

Well bollocks to all of that. People don't remember the boring bits of life, they remember bits of their lives that may appear to be boring to others. I mean, often a person will tell a story that they clearly think is worth communicating, only to be greeted by tumbleweed rolling by as a lead balloon hits the floor. For example, imagine if someone told you what they thought about a movie as they walked home alone at night? They don't do it because they think the story it boring, but that doesn't mean that it isn't boring subjectively. As for the meaning of life, if you need a movie to come along and inform you that you're not the center of the universe I feel bad for you. If the film makes you think about the big questions, I mean, what do you think about when you're alone? I mean, I know I've always had to spend the vast majority of my time alone, but everyone spends time alone at some stage. When you walk down the street and all the people walk along, how can you not wonder why we put on suits, or put needles in our arms, or shout from boxes about God, while the birds just fly around, not a care in the world. This brings me back to the start of this post. I think about that because I'm bored and lonely. If your life is so hurried and love-filled that you need a movie to take you into the reality of my life then I hate you intrinsically.

Art and film are not inclusive I think. People go to the cinema to be entertained, that's why most movies are completely DOA. Tree of Life isn't like that, no. But I certainly enjoyed Transformers 3 way more, even though I spent its whole 150 minute run-time trying to decide if I find Rosie Huntington-Whiteley attractive or not (decision: I do?). That's because, I guess, Tree of Life sets out to be art, not entertainment. I mean, I've seen Drawing Restraint 9, and that was definitely art but my gods is it boring. Brown Bunny was boring, long and self-indulgent, everything Tree of Life was and less, because it didn't aspire to anything (well, you know), but it was by Vincent Gallo, who wrote, directed, starred, edited, scored, wrote, produced, and would have auto-fellated if he could, and nobody likes him so his art is discarded. I liked it (somewhat). His last movie isn't even being printed to DVD, and I, for one, would love to see it. The thing is that some art raises questions. Others raise them in a focused (re manipulative) way. Tree of Life raised a question that I assumed was defaulted into the minds of everyone. The thing is, when you watch, say 2001, or Ikiru, Seventh Seal, The Unbearable Lightness of Being or Love and Death, any film that's about nothing more than the meaning of life, how come they all manage to put something interesting in there to make you think about it? 2001 gave us Hal, the ultimate extension of man, an artificial intelligence that shows its humanity by being capable of error and self-preservation. Seventh Seal gave us invisible chess with death and dancing. Unbearable Lightness of Being has doggies befriending piggies. Tree of Life's most memorable image is of a spoiled child standing by the jack of a car. Really.

That's the trouble with art. Art is horses for courses. Not that many people are into art, really, they just aspire to be. But it takes too much effort. Cinema is a Friday evening after-work-with-the-girls thing for the majority of its audience. And without that cinema doesn't exist. It's the scores of mouthbreathing muppets who go and see the lastest derivatation of

loser+contrivance/(unlikly love interest + barely threatening alteregotistical villain)=$$$

who keep the cinema in cash, thereby allowing them to put on showings of arty shite like Tree of Life. Don't hate the Harry Potters, there would be no Beginners or Holy Rollers without them. And if you go see Transformers, at the very least it'll keep you awake for a while and raise a question just as unanswerable as that of the meaning of life. Is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley attractive?

Just trundling along

2011-07-06T19:08:00.004+01:00

[Reset button depressed]

I don't know if you know this but I am anti-abortion. I know it's a complex issue, but that doesn't mean that I have to consider the weights of each side and find them balanced, does it? I could only really consider the case of a girl or woman not wanting to take a rapist's baby to term as the mitigating fact in favour of abortion. Though I imagine, even then, that the complexity of emotions would make that a difficult decision for someone to make. What I really have issue with is the fact that some people bizarrely see it as a religious issue. Now. I was raised as a Catholic by reasonably devout Catholics. My father is too intelligent a man to believe that there's a bearded white Palestinian Jew in the sky meticulously planning our every outcome, but he still has "faith". My mother seems to hate religion as, it must be said, she hates all other things. I'm particularly fond of her description of even the slightest religious utterance as "rawmation". I've never found anything in the dictionary like that word. Neither seems to believe in any of it, but they are still Catholic and still devout, because at the end of the day, what those overly critical of religion fail to realise is that the ultimate extension of religious faith is twofold: that a body can influence the external factors that effect our lives (prayer); and that there has to be more than this (and deep down we know there is). I can live with that. And, at the end of the day, a bad atheist is as the same as a bad believer. Hitler may have been a Protestant but Mengele was an atheist, and pedophilia and priesthood are not collectively exhaustive. Anyway the fact is that Ireland is the only state in Europe where abortion is illegal, and I say good on us. It's nice to be different, especially when most Europeans are such insufferable bastards. Oh, you used to have an Empire and get a bit of sunshine do you? FUCK OFF.

Anyway, I realized today that two of my favourite songs are about abortion, there about half an hour ago. That's odd. I mean, Miley Cyrus could definitely sell a song about abortion, as, I'm sure could Rihanna, when she's not singing ones about killing men, having sex, having sex, having sex, having sex, or having sex. You'd think one of these days she might win. With sex, the winner gets a baby, you see.

So here's Casual by Here We Go Magic. It's not safe for work, but not so self-servingly, publicity-baitingly controversial that it got taken down by Youtube, despite featuring an actual unblurred man's dick [i.e. neither the man nor dick is blurred]. [Seriously, how hard did Mia try to get that video taken off youtube? Did you click the Rihanna links? They're all way worse. And it's not so aggressive as say, this Health video, while this Yuck video has nudity in it. Both are on Youtube, as is Born Free director Romain Gavras's more controversial and chilling Justice video. She baited the tabloids and they, and Youtube, fell for it.]

And here's A Baby for Pree by Neutral Milk Hotel, the most hauntingly beautiful song I've heard in a very long time. Ever? Why not.

Waiting for Godot

2010-12-10T16:35:00.004Z

I'm back on the unemployment list and I don't like it. When I graduated college I tried to wait out the recession by going back to do a pointless master's which was almost as big a waste of time as my undergraduate degree. I didn't know what I wanted to be as a kid. I'd like to imagine that most of us don't, how could we? I wanted to be a be a soldier as a child because I was basically a psychotic. I always liked sports. But then I did a career guidance thing that said I should be a diplomat, basically because I never pick sides in an argument and have enormous trouble telling people how I really feel about anyone or anything. That sounds diplomatic, although it never asked me why that might be the case. I never pick sides because I like to sit in the middle, and never tell the truth about things because, essentially, I'm not a complex person. There's very little going on up here [points to head]. I'm not very smart and I don't get along with people because I like weird things. All I really wanted was that my lonely childhood would dissipate into a pleasant adulthood. It hasn't, because I now realise that I need to be alone most of the time. I find it more comforting and comfortable than the alternative, which is to actually have people calling me or trying to make me do things. The biggest problem I have at the end of the day is that I think about myself too much, not in the selfish sense, but in the overly analytic sense that corrodes confidence and leaves me accepting that whatever happens is ultimately my own fault. Take for example the fact that I don't have a job again. I was good at my job, but I hated it. I also knew that I had a short term contract so I did my duties slowly to drag them out. Had I done a quicker more thorough job perhaps I would have been able to fill another position. I don't know that, but it's possible. Now I'm back to looking for work when there isn't any. I tried to wait it out as I said, but there is no waiting this out. We are in the death of capitalism right now. There is no way to have several enormous economies all struggling to grow. We are on a planet of finite resources, how can we increasingly consume eternally? We can't. The main reason that all major Western economies are failing is because we are used to having too much. Enough was never enough. Just look at the myth of food shortages. In America you have a professional Major League Eating, where food is eaten for sport. You have restaurants which serve pounds of food. Nobody needs to eat that much, but they can. In America in particular it's expected. To facilitate this, forests are torn down in poorer countries, particularly Latin American countries, where the majority of citizens live on less than $2 per day, and the cattle that graze are slaughtered and shipped to America where they already have enough food. It's madness. In pursuit of profits, Western companies lay off staff and move operations to the Asia Pacific regions where labour costs are lower. This is not done for the benefit of anyone, as the labourers are treated like slaves. In the West, the company can boast of huge profits (profit levels have actually gone up for most major corporations in the West over the last 3 years), thanks largely to the barefaced lie of cost-saving lay-offs. The directors and executives at the top of the company are obscenely wealthy, and operations that run with profits in the hundreds of millions can afford to take on thousands of staff at reasonable wages, and expand outwards as a result. Profit, as we define it is having more than would be sufficient. Who benefits from that? The new economic system will be more socially leaning, and based on a zero growth principal. Literally balancing the books. Not trying to make the books explode at the seams, just balancing them. This is the key of effective economics in a world that's up the shitter. You have to remember that the pursuit of economic growth is based on greed, avarice to be specific. Now, the thing is, the media has done a shit job of conveying the truth of the situation in Ireland, making them just as culpable for the general uncertainty as Fianna Fáil. For example, RTE news continuously refers to this thing called "government funds". The government is not a business, of course, the funds are actually taxpayer money, or public funds. Now, By using the word public, RTE would be conveying the truth that the public's money is being spent without the public's consent, and being done so to do simply amazing feats such as turning private debt into public debt. Of course, there is a simple way out of our problems. Under Fianna Fáil the pat answer is that "it's not going to be easy". What they meant was they're not even going to try. If you told Brian "State Funeral" Lenihan his shoes were untied he'd reply, "I'm aware that the shoes were untied, and that at present we're looking at tying them in the future. But it won't be easy". Nothing is easy. Then RTE will send economic correspondent David Davin-Power around town for half an hour and he'll find 3-4 economists and entrepreneurs who will each come up with maybe 5 resolutions whatever the problem is, in this instance untied shoes. How is it that these people were so ready with solutions? Is it that Fianna Fáil didn't try? Sure looks that way to me. But what do I know, I only got a 2:1 in Observation. That said, I have observed a little fact that has gone totally unreported: the banks that make up the ECB are the same banks that Anglo Irish, Irish Permanent (misnomer), AIB and BOI owe so much money to. So what is happening right now is that money is being taken out of Bank A, being sent to Bank B, in order that Bank B can pay back Bank A. So they're being doubly paid, with the second loans coming over the odds. You might as well try paying one credit card off with another. It's bollocks. And anyway, why doesn't the public buy the banks, all 5 of them and merge them into one, take all the debt out, write it off (default, because we can't pay it back fullstop), and then use the collective assets, all now debt free, to fund new ventures? Obviously, the problem here, Fintan O'Toole will tell you in his third book on the recession (as a man who is openly benefiting from our misery, he comes as the most false of all prophets), is that we'll be frozen out of the European bond markets. Well this is true, but guess what bastert? Europe is cancelled. The Euro is a monumental failure, mainly because it takes away a nation's ability to increase its competitiveness by lowering the value of its currency, thereby increasing the attractiveness of its exports and combating inflation. Point 2 is that THERE ARE OTHER BOND MARKETS!!!! Ever heard of Asia? All of the top growing economies in the world are in Asia. Asia is the future, provided we continue into a limited future of economic growth strategies, which we will. Give China a call, I hear they have all the money in the fucking world. There is never a lack of options, never, and the government is being held to ransom by a banking system that has been revealed to hold so much power that it appears to rule the whole world. It certainly has far too much say in my life for me to be comfortable with it. And the thing about it is that we have a very nearsighted political and social outlook. Everyone seems to think that a key factor in the banking collapse is "irresponsible lending". This is true. But first of all, you can't have irresponsible lending without irresponsible borrowing, so it's undeniable that many people are in a mess of their own making. However, a bigger point is that Irish people face an enormously uncertain future because the banks irresponsible borrowing has come to haunt them. You see, the money that the banks were "throwing at people" back in the early 00's was itself borrowed. And boy, European banks couldn't lend it fast enough. It was like they were throwing it at the Irish banks. The Irish banks are in debt because they owe irresponsible lenders, why has nobody made a bigger point of that? I mean, if Irish banks default, like many Irish businesses and households have had to, then the debt carries on down the chain, and the major European banks, which couldn't lend quick enough, will feel a bite. And then they'll default. And so on and so on. If that were to happen, the entire global financial system would have to default, and you know what? It will. Eventually. One of the main reasons that Ireland is under such scrutiny now is because we're just the next in line. Portugal, Spain (the 9th largest economy in the world), Belgium, Italy are all going to fall. America, now over $14 trillion in debt, is going to fall. Just do it now. At least, at the very least, what needs to happen is we need to follow the chain all the way down the rabbit hole. I guarantee that almost all of the money in the world is ephemeral. All borrowed against some accountant's valuation of mouldy assets. And then. Somewhere, at the end of the world, is Fred. What you doing with my money in your house Fred?

Bread

2010-05-27T23:18:00.002+01:00

So I just finished my shift at 9:15 and I've to get up for the morning shift at 5:30, so I'll make this quick. I just wanted to get it down before I forget.

At work, I sit at a desk in a row of three people, opposite three people. Mine is the only one that has this face-to-face action, and it tends to be the only one where anyone talks. I sit beside a girl named Robyn, the lovelier half of a pair of twins who work there, and an odd man named Donal who talks only about football, despite the fact that his knowledge appears to have stunted in about 1998. Opposite are a name-dropping failed RTE woman, our lovely supervisor Michelle, and an Italian man named Paolo who sounds exactly like Pat Kenny. Really.

Anyway, this week Donal hasn't been in and he has had his place taken by an odd man. He is Eastern European, and says hello in the morning with a big smile on his face, but after that affects a natural frown, while sitting perfectly still listening to what sounds like trumpets on his iPod. At lunch he appears to power down, sitting bolt upright doing precisely nothing, he doesn't even eat despite being the size of my apartment. He is a big old unit. Just envisage Zangeif from Street Fighter, right down to the goatee and speedos.

Anyway, Paolo was talking about food today, as usual, but he started a dick-swinging competition, er, with the girls about who had eaten the strangest and most delicious of God's creations. I threw down kangaroo, which I'm pretty sure could only be trumped by the sweetest meat of all (human). And with that, my dick swung around and the contest was over. So we just sat back for a moment to take it all in.

Then Zangeif turns to me, holding my gaze like a man about to set me on fire, and remember I didn't even know he spoke English, says, "You like brrrread, yis?"

Obviously he's twigged that we were talking about food. I said "yeah sure, whatever you want, just don't hurt me" or something like that. He's very large.

"Is good, make you big and strrrrong", he said, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

"You must eat a lot of it so, hahaha" I cowered in reply.

And then he said, "Yis, I like brrread verrry much". And to emphasise the point, whipped out what appeared to be one half of a loaf of uncut white bread and with a homp bit a chunk out of it, and ate it with his mouth open, still grinning at me. I was laughing so hard I nearly cried. A loaf of bread. Then he just put his earphones back in and went back to where ever he goes in there.

Zangief. What a man.

Kissing Ryanair on the mouth

2010-04-30T00:53:00.009+01:00

Shift work? Whose idea was that? Some corporate bastard I'll wager. Who breng money, I ask you? I'd much rather live like an animal, foraging for spaghetti and protecting myself from man's natural predators (jackalope, Nestlé, any character played by Alan Rickman in a film) than work in an office. The interesting thing about working is that all anyone thinks or talks about is the time you're not working. I'm beginning to think that viciously oppressive communism is the way forward. We could all live on £35 a week if we could make do, rather than act like greedy bastards all the time, stomping all over one another's heads like Super Mario to get up the corporate ladder so they can afford a new bra or whatever. And then we wouldn't have to pay Greece to run a society so casually that you got a bonus just for being on time.

Here's what's up:

1. Every show ever made is better than The Wire. I finally got around to watching it, and it's a good piece of television. I bet you didn't expect to see that sentence, especially after that heading. Well shut up, grandma. You see The Wire is good. Sure. But is it really the moan-its-name-during-orgasm good as every critic proclaimed it to be?

NNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's good, but really, two things struck me overwhelmingly, both negative: 1. the mood of the series is beyond misanthropic and by the end knowingly and wilfully mean-spirited; 2. Stringer Bell.

Its tone is really unmissable, the series chooses 5 areas of any city (police, working class, politics, schools and the media) and wags its finger in each of their faces while making fart noises. Each is corrupt and stilted by a pack hierarchy. Wow, I wouldn't have assumed that. You really taught me something. And you taught me this one time? No, five fucking times. I like how nobody thought of saying anything smart or new about these institutions, but you'd hardly expect that from a show that secretly toes the line by giving positive outcomes to all the good-natured people and killing everyone else. That's original. And Stringer Bell, are you kidding me? How can anyone enjoy this character? Idris Elba plays him with a single permanent expression; nonchalant perplexion, like he has no idea what's going on but couldn't be bothered doing anything about it. He is a joke. Other than its frankly rubbish third season and that ridiculous school-principal holier-than-thou tone of the series it's a decent police procedural with good characters, but don't worry about not seeing it.

That said, there's so many odd things being said about it that one could feel obligated to not only consume it but vouch for its untouchability. Smeg that cheese. Do you need a degree in Baltimore street parlance? No, unless you are legally a robot. Do you need to pay absolute, religious attention? No, it's actually not that complex, compared to something like Breaking Bad (what?) or Six Feet Under (when?). It's odd to re-read reviews after the fact. I like reading sports preview after the game is over to see the total disparity between prognostication and proceedings. It's a wonder a lot of those guys have jobs when you consider that predicting Liverpool would win the league, or say Munster could beat a national team before they got smacked about the face by Leinster in 2009 as Hugh Farrelly did, would surely get you fired if you had performance evaluation. It's similar for The Wire. I suppose that I'm not a TV reviewer, so I don't have to sit through a load of shit each week. If I did maybe I'd appreciate a big meaty show like The Wire. But the thing is that I do watch a lot of shows, many of which I think are better than it, largely out of one thing that it's pretty patchy in the The Wire and is absent from all the reviews I read: entertainment. The Wire is good, but whole episodes go by with nothing important happening, and only brief moments of levity. It's hard for me to envisage the person who actually enjoys The Wire. It's interesting, and can be entertaining, but is it the most entertaining thing on TV? Oh God no. Not in the top 100. Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad, Br-

2. Ow my ears: In work we get paid 15 cent for every refund we issue. The result of this is that bona-fide twits are doing huge numbers of refunds incorrectly just so they can achieve high totals. At first I tried to go flat out and did 200 in a day, so I bemoaned the fact that people who got 300+ must be doing them wrong. You just couldn't pay attention to everything and do that many. So the next day when I did 330 I felt a bit self-conscious. The number is subject to series of variables. One of the factors is who sits beside you, because if someone starts talking to you about Ronan Keating you lose your concentration and suddenly the simple task of pushing F7 F4 F9 F6 over and over becomes impossible. So the solution is the iPod. My mum washed mine in the washing machine especial, so it's shiny and new, and somehow works better than before. But when you've got quite small ears like I do, the original headphones hurt like a motherbitch. Everything about me is small, apart from my dingaling, which I can assure you all is breathtakingly average. Those earphones are huge though but. Who designed them? Charlotte Church?

3. When I was growing up, one of my favourite shows was The Adventures of Pete and Pete which was about a 10 year old lumberjack and his baseball loving elder brother, both ginger Americans. It was a typical kids show, apart from the fact that it wasn't. It was also a treasure trove of cameos from musicians from bands you've almost heard. Of. Pete's best friend and confidant was a man named Artie, The Strongest Man... In the World, who was played by Toby Huss who went on to play the amazing Felix 'Stumpy' Dreifuss in the subplots>mainplot Carnivale, a fact that, when I discovered it, caused my head to explode. The head I now have is totally the same. If you think he doesn't look that strong, well guess what? He can move a house with his pinky. And yes that is a large bulge in his pants.

Anyway, amongst the oddballs in Pete and Pete's town was their mum, who had a metal plate in her head that received and occasionally broadcast radio signals and ruined the air traffic control radar system at Ryanair between April 1994 and April 1994, an evil nemesis named Papercut, who made paper knives that could cut the peak off of a baseball cap, a possible alien who had a hearing aid that could be turned up in order to... space, something to do with space, and their arch-nemesis, Pitstain. Pitstain was a Sweaty Betty who had permanent greasy hair and yellow stains under his pits. This made him volatile, and presumably, stinky.

The thing is, when I walk home this weather, particularly in the weather we're having this weather, I stumble in the door with enormous sweat-stains on my back and a t-shirt that is stuck to me. It's a good hour walk, and I always bring my coat because when I get up at yesterday o'clock it's nearly always raining and cold. As soon as I get the door shut I strip bollock naked, and (after having a little cry, why not) I have a second shower. Where am I?

Anyway, you see I kind of forgot I had "Pat Rafter Syndrome". Pat Rafter is an Australian former tennis player who used to sweat like a stewing onion when he played. It isn't a real syndrome, or at least wasn't before. You see the reason for it is it being a big hairy bastard, something that Pat and I both are. Which is unfortunate, but it could be worse. There is a real affliction known as "weather-related African-American supracranial vaporous emission", which luckily I'm exempt from.

4. Work is boring. Really, why does anyone bother? My "job" such as it is, is a ridiculous exercise in utterly fatal fire-sale mismanagement. So what better way to endure it than by learning a bunch of fascinating air industry technical jargon?

Three letter currency codes are used to denote... currency. Some more obscure ones are PNL: Polish Lira, MAD: Madrid Dollars, HUF: Helsinki Ufhs, and TRA: Tranny Points
Similar to military-style operations, the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet (or ICAO, as it's really abbreviated to) is used to transfer reservation codes. This makes it feel more exciting than it is, especially if you've always wanted to play a Sargent on the Bill. Which I haven't. But it has been modified slightly. G is denoted by "Guinness", Y by "jazz flute" and K by "what's K again?".
Three letter codes are also used to denote airports, as any traveller will know, boss. But some of them make no sense. Why is Birmingham BHX? I thought that it was Brussels, because of the H tucked away in there. Did you know that Butler Airport is denoted by BUM? And Derim is denoted by DER? You work it out.

You may now resume your normal lives.

Nothing more can be further than the truth

2010-03-31T23:39:00.008+01:00

I've been writing a lot recently for a portfolio I'll be putting online soon. To achieve this I had to deactivate my Twitter account. Twitter makes it hard to write. You think of something funny (well, that I think is funny) and post it there, or you find a curious video and link to it on Twitter. Just 140 characters and bosh, it's out there. But I used to find odd things online and then construct 1,000 word posts about them. Like that time I saw a picture of Katy Perry on a bike and spent about two hours photoshopping it into a tandem. While two hours sounds like a long time, I've got lots of two hour blocks of free time, which I'd gladly spend photoshopping Katy Perry onto things. Without Twitter, I probably will. Although in truth, not getting any replies when I posted this Forehead Tittaes video was the final insult. I mean, that woman has an Oscar for crying out loud. Philistines.

So, here's a small selection of things I posted on twitter. I backed all 1,500 posts up and just spent two hours (it's working already) reading them, picking out the better ones. It's almost like a Look Out Below twitter feed clips show.

Pancake o'clock.
Cooking my spaghetts!
This baguette is delicious, but it is filling.
This meat-lovers pizza isn't loving me back.
I drink your milkshake.
Makin a withdrawal from the pancake bank.
... too much ragamagoo

A lot of them were about food actually. It's mostly just that and me swearing at things. Although I can't remember what this was supposed to mean:

I have never worn a bra, but, then again, I would say that.

There you are. Looking back, I can't see the point of any of it. When you see them from the eyes of someone else, I doubt any of it made any sense. I guess this blog is the same. Remember this liveblog of the SuperBowl? That was a parody of the live sports text feeds that BBC and The Guardian do. It was intentional to omit the names of the team, details of the happenings and any coherent over-view of what was happening. Have you ever read on of these? Surely the point of a liveblog is to transmit a sense of the occasion to people away from their TVs, but look at this Guardian liveblog of the recent Sport Relief. None of it makes any sense. At one point the woman writing it talks about another show, and people are mentioned as if they're recognisable by first name alone. Who is Mark? He's mentioned in it twice. I don't know who he is, but he's cooking carbonara. It's got spelling mistakes, it makes no sense to anyone not watching the show they're describing and the writers are both dickheads (though it is The Guardian so that's implied). People get paid to do this, and I'm giving it away free like a child with chickenpox.

Anyway, Twitter is gone now, and I think that's a good thing. But I did love it, in my way. Here's a song that perfectly summarizes my feelings about leaving twitter.

Not really.

Things I've shaved over the years

2010-03-17T23:05:00.007Z

Far be it from me to actually enjoy something (how does that phrase go again?), but god did RTE get something right with that Teens in The Wild show. The show is based on one of the most toe-curlingly despicable acts of blatant car-crash voyeurism of all time, and I mean that. Think about that statement. Over the years, in Europe we're limited to the relatively recent past, reality TV has come up with some crazy concepts. There was the original talent show The Gong Show in 1970s America, which was hosted by Charles P. Barris, the author of lazily written cliché-fest autobiography Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. I'll stop you there. The opening paragraph to his autobiography stated:

My name is Charles Prescott Barris. I have written pop songs, I have been a television producer. I am responsible for polluting the airwaves with mindnumbing, puerile entertainment. In addition, I have murdered thirty-three human beings. I am damned to hell.

He claimed to have been a assassin, chaperoning Dating Game game show winners to exotic locales where he would murder on the CIA dime. The CIA deny this (but they would wouldn't they? *looks shiftily around room*), but the puerile entertainment bit is true. Although it did give birth to Gene Gene, the janitor who was pushed on stage when a show came up short on running time.

Barris' autobiography was so insane that Columbia bought film rights for it in the 80s, before letting them lapse. In the 90s a private producer bought them and commissioned Charlie "Being John Malkovic Malkovic? MALKOVIC!" Kaufman to write the script and he did, and it's a masterpiece. George Clooney came on to direct and really went his own way with it, and made it a little Hollywood, but showed incredible skill and showmanship, and you'll have to forgive me for liking hugely entertaining movies, but the end result is one of my favourite movies of all time., even if it tanked at the box office. Barris is still alive, surviving cancer. Other game shows he invented include the $1.98 Beauty Pageant and The Game Game, but they didn't make a movie about them so I don't really know anything about them. That's sort of true of most things in life. What is this "ketchup" everyone's so fond of? Anyway, basically, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind suggests that the audience is the real victim in Barris' crimes, whether real, imaginary or simply televisual.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, reality TV. Charlie Brooker basically tells you how it works, generating drama and narrative in what is effectively the tightly controlled "reality" environment that doesn't actually exist on TV. Of course, there's that guy whose name escapes me who proved that the act of being observed serves to alter the behaviour of the subject. Therefore, the act of observing a person through a camera, i.e. filming a person, alters their state, meaning reality cannot be captured on film. Anyway, I can't remember that guy's name so take it away Charlie.

Anyway, not all of these kinds of programme are competitive, some of them are literal freak shows, only for some reason people are fully prepared to give up their anonymity and existing public perception for a short stint in front of the cameras. For example there's this:

It's impossible for me to watch that video and not hate the X Factor and everything it does and everyone who watches it and especially everyone who runs it. More so than that, I hate the fact that that clip makes me agree with Simon Cowell and his bizarre hair. But... what's this?

So what that means is that some filthy bastard saw those awful people on X Factor and thought those awful people, who pressurize their daughter to do something she's incapable and unwilling to do, now they deserve their own show. Sure, it's a show with them as pledge and punchline, but who are we to mock them? People like that are the fault of the collective reality audience, a Frankenstein's monster, both victim and villain. It's all a bit much. You could argue that there's a market for this kind of thing, and TV is one of the least adventurous industries there is, and the show wouldn't be made without one, and that market reaps what it sows. But still, my mind races.

Anyway, what RTE did, in their infinite unwisedom, was to create Teens in The Wild. It follows psychologist David Coleman, the man who somehow already got his own show where he was allowed to bring cameras into the homes of women who react to their child dropping yoghurt on the floor by threatening to break the child's back, as he treats a bunch of girls with only marginally more abrasive tendencies than any of the girls I've ever dated, in the wilds of Donegal. What an odd show. Is there no patient confidentiality in the psychology service? Or is it more to do with the fact that Coleman doesn't appear on the HSE's list of registered psychologists? Or perhaps it's telling that the third name on the end credits is for the show's solicitor. Either way, the girls on this have some real emotional issues, and those issues are being aired nationally.

And my god does that make for an entertaining show. TV in general is manufactured by women (or gay men) for women (and gay men), and it turns out that the 30 minute randomly changing emoticon that is Eastenders is a relatively accurate depiction of how girls behave. All the girls in TiTW (huh?) are all damaged to some degree by, in my mind, mildly difficult circumstances. They all hate one another. Then they all love one another. Then they all gang up on one member. It is quite simply, mental, but the emotions are all real, and they're all there, generally in your face shouting swears at you from beneath pencilled on eyebrows.

Anyway, if you want to see emotionally vulnerable people being put on display, and honestly who doesn't?, then you can watch every minute of it here (do it quick). I think the RTE player will work anywhere on earth, despite being a national broadcaster for Ireland and requiring Irish citizens to pay a licence fee for the joys of it on TV. All you free loading international moochers can also bask in the knowledge that RTE also has several American shows free for all to view, in contravention of basically every copyright law in existence in the television broadcasting subsection. Montrose, you've done it again.

The Special Olympics

2010-02-22T13:50:00.002Z

The Winter Olympics are something I never invested much time in before. But of course, 4 years ago, when the last one was on, I still had aspirations and a life goal. Now I don't, so I've been watching it more or less round the clock. I know that Ireland doesn't have any competitors in it, so I've no real vested interested in the outcomes of events, and Brits are few and far between so I have no real vested interest in shouting abuse at anyone either. This gives me the opportunity to passively witness in a neutral capacity, which is fair enough, but sort of makes the outcome moot. At the end of the day, the events are deeply difficult to genuinely care about.

This is because the games are a bit of a sham. First of all, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that snowboarding was not one of the ancient olympic games. There are obvious reasons for this, one being there's no snow in Greece and two being that original olympians competed in the nude, which transferred to snow would result in a lot of discomfort. De Coubertin of course founded the IOC with the aim of it acting as a sort of UN-style bringer-togertherer of all nations. The Winter Olympics doesn't do this, it's really more of a Snolympics, limiting contesting nations to the pan-alpine belt, former CCCP, Scandinavia and North America, with a smattering of Japanese and Koreans in the indoor events. It turns out that the answer to the philosophical question "how many skiers are born in the desert" is none. This means that the games are low on events and sparse in dispersion.

And what of those events. Well, some are vaguely familiar, such as anything that has had a movie or Mega Drive game made about it (4-man bobsled, ice hockey, curling). Still, a lot of it was news to me. Here's a few things I learned during the past 9 or so days:

In Australia, they call it the Summer Olympics.
Britain actually won a gold medal in ice-hockey, back in 1936.
The most important factor in about 90% of events is gravity.
To have an official time in the downhill skiing, you have to have three pieces of equipment out of 5 attached.
If you miss a target in the biathalon, you must ski a lap around an extraneous circuit. If you miss two targets you get executed by firing squad.
You have to do the two-man luge with your brother.
The organisers observe a strict ratio of 25 cowbells to every 1 flag that reads "more cowbell".
No commentator for BBC understands the "more cowbell" reference, nevermind the banner at the ski-jumping that read "Don't blow this for us Gene".
Bode Miller, the American skier who won a gold, silver and bronze in the alpine events has two sisters, one named Kayla the other named (and I haven't made this up) Genesis Wren Bungo Windrushing Turtleheart.
Bode Miller is a filthy hippy.

That in a nutshell, is the Winter Olympics.

America

2010-02-22T01:31:00.004Z

Tiger Woods apologized for being an alpha male on Friday. Tiger was obscenely wealthy, and women find that there is no such thing as an ugly millionaire, therefore he had the means to bag as many slutty bimbos as he felt like. So he did. And he won major after major. His job was to be a golfer, which is to say, that he had to be better than other privileged sissies at hitting a small ball into a gopher hole, and what he did off course matters not a single Goddamn. Once he stepped off the course he stopped being relevant to me, because he's a golfer not my life model. He isn't sorry, if he was he would have stopped doing what he did. And apologies are by their nature nothing more than an admission of guilt, rather than absolution for it. If Tiger didn't want to bang bitches, he wouldn't have. The only reason he has to pretend he did something wrong is because his wife will try to bleed him dry and he'll lose sponsorship. Don't be so dumb as to believe that what every millionaire sportsman, actor or rock star really wants is to settle down and live the boring life of the plebiscite. Fuck that sound. They regret nothing. The only reason they write memoirs that look back with regret on the wild time they had is because that's what idiots want to read, and also possibly because rich people are never happy, they just want want want.

Above all else, what Tiger Woods' apology really says is just how fucking stupid a country America is. Tiger's apology was a massive news story on Friday, a day that a man became so unhappy with the US taxation system that he flew a plane into his local inland revenue. Did you hear about that? That wasn't even a big story in America, I hear. Which is worse, do you think, consensual sex between two adults or America's tolerance of violence?

On Friday, Shaun White the snowboarder swore on TV. He issued an apology. During the regular season, Denver Broncos coach Jay McDaniels swore on TV. He was forced to apologize after initially brushing it off. Following Janet Jackson's nipple exposure a few years back, TV in America is rarely live, but on a delay, so that they won't get caught out by wardrobe malfunctions or swearing. Americans hate nudity and swearing. Hate it. Nudity is a driving factor of the infinity dollar pornography industry, which is homed in America. Swearing is limited to HBO and movies in America. But, here's the problem for me. Violence isn't limited in any capacity.

Did you see Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili die tragically in last week's warm-ups? I didn't but NBC, the same channel that apologized for Shaun White's swear, has shown it several times. Oddly, I am far less inclined to want to witness a man's life being extinguished before my eyes. Call me old fashioned. How old fashioned? Let's have a look.

I think that American cinema has played the key factor in lowering the tolerance level for violence in America and by extension, everywhere that allows the level of US cultural domination that Ireland does. Ireland, for example. In terms of narrative force, film hasn't moved on much from the famous Godard quote that all you need to create drama is a man, woman and a gun. When cinema began in the 1900s, the violence was non-existent. What film-makers used to create drama was "perilous situations", such as the scenario of a woman trapped in a burning house that inspired Edwin S Porter to invent editing. By the 1910s, you had the first instances of people handling other people, mostly wrestling, like in Tarzan or Justice of the Wild. By the 1920s, people were still more interested in musicals and comedy, but even expressionist German thrillers like M stuck to shadow and tension, with a few slaps thrown in. By the 1930s however, gangsters were in vogue, with films like Scarface or Public Enemy, but the strict censorship of the Hays Code largely left violence off-screen, although the odd person would indicate that they had been shot by clutching one hand to their chest, the other extended palm-up, their mouth open, their legs slowly lowering them safely to the floor where their mouth and eyes would shut to indicate death. This was all thanks to the religious right, which enforced a moral code decreeing that the good guys had to win with the bad guys either caught or killed in the end. Seriously. By the 1940s the whole world was a different place, and women had been emancipated by their efforts in the war, no longer limiting them to the kitchen. To counter this, the 40s gave us Film Noir, with its rather heavy-handed approach towards women. That is to say, it's fairly common to see them get smacked around a bit in the 40s, in films like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity or Big Sleep. The 1950s saw the rise of the war film. This is when large numbers of people began to be killed on screen, albeit mostly in the same manner as in the 30s. Blood was introduced, but only for special occasions, as was the explosion, like in Bridge on the River Kwai or Paths of Glory.

Then the 60s came and changed everything. Suddenly, you had the rise of the Western. The taming of the Western frontier was vicious and lawless, two things that Hollywood wasn't. So film-makers would go abroad to more liberal climes in Europe and make spaghetti westerns, usually in Spain. This gave us anti-heroes, no white-bread good guys and two big advances in visual effects: the squib and a new fake blood made of corn-syrup and red food dye. Films like Sam Peckinpath' or Sergio Leone's westerns were bloodbaths. Spartacus and Psycho came out, and weren't afraid of leaving a pool of bloody guts behind them. So the Hays Code was thrown out, and the more liberal(ish) MPAA rating scheme that's still used today was introduced. This basically said, fuck it, you decide if you want to watch that heathen shit on your own.

So in the 70s, they threw caution to the wind. Violence was used by intelligent directors to add a shockingly concussive exclamation mark on their work. Look at how Lumet builds the tension of Dog Day Afternoon at first threatening violence, before sucking you into an intimate tale of two rather pathetic, caring losers who haven't thought their actions through. By the end you've forgotten about the threat, making the final minutes heartbreakingly affecting. Taxi Driver is the same, threatening an explosive outburst from the beginning before finally delivering a messy technicolor orange bloodbath at the end. Films like Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter, the Godfather trilogy, all showed how violence is a very bad thing, not a stylized form of entertainment, but a provocation to consider the consequences and realities.

Of course that led to the 80s, which had taken in the serious, high-conscience 70s films and come out the other side. This led to cartoonish levels of often inconsequential violence, like in Scarface, Terminator or A Nightmare on Elm Street. Looking back at Terminator, it's hard to think that Arnie popping his eye out was a massive deal at the time, because it looks so fake. Also, films like Nightmare on Elm Street suddenly had the special effects technology and ingenuity to move horror on from the scary shadows and insinuation of films like Jaws or the pioneering volatility of The Exorcist to where a character could be repeatedly stabbed in the chest and begin bleeding without needing to edit several shots together, cut away, or laugh at the rubber knife bending. This all carried into the 1990s, and for most of that decade, for the first time, violence was portrayed in comedic terms. Of course slapstick often used violence to generate laughs, but films like Lethal Weapon, Pulp Fiction and anything where Arnie quips invited us to see the humour in someone being killed. Die Hard kept it real, but most action films were indicative of the other trends of the decade, namely inventive, gory stabbings with whatever was lying around usually to the face; and big explosions. Big big big explosions.

Then Spielberg changed everything. He used the advances in effects and editing to recreate the Normandy landings on D-Day, and suddenly we had 70s style violence, raw, affecting, horrible. Disgusting bloody murder. Because that's what war is like, it's not stylized, it's brutal. The problem is that everyone saw that movie. The more people see something like that, the more people are going to have reset tolerance levels for violence. In the 2000s, Ridley Scott made the insanely good Gladiator, the Lord of the Rings films had huge body counts, and more people than you'd have thought paid money to see The Passion of The Christ. Now if you want to show someone being whipped you can. Before it would have been enough to hold a medium low-angled shot of the guy's face with the soft focused whipper in the background. Every time there's a whip-crack, the guy's face contorts in agony, badda-bing, a whipping. But now we have to see the paper-thin cut form and split and bleed. Welts have to form and burst before our eyes or we simply won't fully understand the relationship between whip and skin. The pain, the agony is gone, all that matters is the bloody guts.

And so it goes. The Saw and Hostel films feel compelled to show every splintered bone and gouged eye, without cutting away, without any feeling, without care. Films like Jaws or Don't Look Now let us use our minds to fill in the blanks. Now the horrors are visual, but they don't really affect us, because the victim is a cypher. They are nothing more than a vessel to inflict pain upon, they don't matter, their wounds are more important.

So with all tolerances raised, violence moved into American TV. The depressingly popular CSI shows and their ilk think nothing of showing heads smashed in, arteries spraying jets of blood all over the place, arms dismembered... it never ends. But at the same time, if you want to swear, you have to do it on HBO. If you want to show nudity, do it on HBO and keep it to boobs and the odd arse. In a world where a film in which a man's head is obliterated by a "Venus Fly Trap" or hands sheared by "The Razor Box" opens top of the US box office, showing a naked penis is still a massive taboo. The thing is that, for any film to be seen by people over 15, they will have likely had at least tried to have sex or will almost definitely have seen all manner of wacky shaved private areas, not least of all their own. So what's the big deal? I mean, I'm not saying that I want every love scene in a movie to be pornographic, I just mean that there's a huge disparity between acceptability of depictions of violence and romance. HBO has a show called Hung, about a guy who gets into male escorting because of his large package. Only they've never shown it. For all I know, I could be sitting on a comparative longboat. Diary of A Call Girl is about a lady escort and she barely shows her ankles. Look at it this way, I found unedited youtube links to Saw II traps and even one for the luger who died, while sexual material is strictly prohibited.

What I think is that America has invested in the dissociation of violence, effectively making it something that happens passively. I mean, look at the people on this bus, just sitting there as a fight breaks out, the driver doesn't even stop. Maybe if Hollywood had invested in depictions of love, America and its drones would be a more caring society. Think about it. Since the dawn of time, romantic films have depicted the most loserish wet-blanket winning the heart of the sexiest rocket scientist in all of Florida, or have focused on the woman who would have it all if she could just find a man to vindicate her. In either case, the credits roll within minutes of their wedding or union, leaving out what happens when you've tethered yourself legally to a single person. They haven't changed at all. But divorce increases every year. There should be a lot more Kramer Vs Kramers than Leap Years. Maybe if Hollywood had moved beyond the happily-married-ever-after stick like they did with the old shot-man-slowly-falls-over-backwards-shuts-eyes, horn dogs like Tiger would never have married in the first place, and then nobody would care and we wouldn't have to watch celebrities being dragged down or fatalities on the TV any more.

Manly Pursuits

2010-02-16T19:25:00.006Z

There's a reservoir in front of my house. My maternal grandfather moved his family from Wicklow to Killeshin when he was made care-taker of the facility that once supplied Carlow town, despite being under the jurisdiction of Laois CoCo. It has a big track running around it, with several bridges and weirs that feed the lake from the rivers that drain the surrounding farmland. I run around that track every day. Or I did, until a mothafuckin tree fell on the trail.

You see, the principal river runs from the field, but splits into three at the weir at the trail's deepest point. One rivulet is scarcely but a dribble, but it has cut a furrow for itself. This furrow created two banks, one of which was little more than a foot wide, accounting for its proximity to the trail. The tree was isolated on this bank, and eventually soil erosion saw it give up its grounding and collapse, right across the track, still rooted to the soil on one side, resting on the wooden railing on the other. So big was this tree that it then broke the first beam on the fence, before coming to a rest immovably on the post. But Laois CoCo haven't been in Killeshin in any capacity since Joe Delany spilled coffee on their one map back in 1999. So I said to my self, scratch that sound.

Thusly I did yea-verily collect my axe and woolly-gloves. The axe had seen better days, which is remarkable for the fact that I didn't even know we had one nevermind seen it used. I took the file from a nearby cake and sharpened the blade. This caused a mini-fire, when a spark caught on a stack of old Sunday Times News Reviews. I didn't have time to put it out, there was a-chopping to cut down.

So I went and I swung and I gouged and I scared a dog and I hacked and I swore and I huffed and I chopped and I micturated and I resumed until that bitch was down. It took about an hour and a half. I couldn't see because I was sweating so much my glasses fogged up. When I looked at the sky I could see the steam coming off my head. A number of welts had formed and burst on my left hand. When I cut through the tree, it still clung on, resting on the fence. So I dun knocked down the fence too. But it rolled itself onto the next post of the fence. So I knocked that mutha down as well.

I did all this shouting "HULK SMASH", and if you were there I would probably have battered you in two as well. It was that kind of football. When I finished, I rolled over and surveyed the wreckage of wood. And it felt good. I feel as though now I could cut down anything. I could cut down a helicopter as it flies in the sky, or a 40-foot pizza delivery boy. Nothing is out of reach. I enjoyed having something actually to do today, even if that was to continuously murder another living thing for a solid 90 minutes. Don't quote me on that.

Equality Officer

2010-02-13T13:22:00.005Z

Now that Niall has decided to answer a phone call from 2001 by starting a LiveJournal, and if I know anything about LiveJournal, he has somewhere he can post his poetry, eye-liner tips and froth-lipped rants over minor idiosyncracies. "Sprogs" and "Czar". Roofing. Religion. Dude, stop reading the Guardian, a newspaper designed to tell middle-class bohos what they want to hear, regardless of factual accuracy. If you want to feel guilty about nothing, let the tap run when you brush your teeth. Somebody, tink of the walez!2!./ But enough about Niall, what's up with you? That's cool. Here's what's up with me.

British people voted Nicola Roberts the sexiest redhead of all time: While I do like a bit of Nicola Roberts, I can't take this list seriously at all. For one, it's printed in The Mirror. For two, Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen (AKA The 50 year of Virgin), is on the list. For three, Kidman and Cross have faces that don't move at all. I'm happy enough that Lily Cole gets a mention albeit behind Lindsay Lohan squeaks in at number 10. The young Lindsay Lohan was a 10, but now she's a disaster. I know I just said she was sexier as a child but that's ok because she's older than me. She can't get any work now that she's a certifiable section 8, but some billionaire offered her $150,000 just to go to 1 party, but she missed the flight and therefore the cash, because she stayed up all night getting drunk with her 16-year-old sister. Where did it all go wrong?
RUGBY TIME: It's that time of the year, when women and sunshine supporters pretend thay know something about the Welsh national past-time. Last year, Ireland won a game or two, so RTE, already completely insufferable in their non-GAA sports analysis, have turned into the BBC. The BBC could be watching Australia playing Eritrea and they'd still only be talking about how a hypotheitical England would cope should they be alternatively playing each of these teams in that same game. Now at half-time in Wales against England, we have George Hook talking about Ireland coping with the Welsh backrow. Sigh. Even worse, all the Munstermen are out in force to tell us how fast Keith Earls is. Earls is the only Munster back in an Irish squad dominated by superior Leinster backs. Munster play possession rugby like South Africa, rarely using their backs, so when Earls plays for Munster and gets the ball (once every game) he sprints forward and everyone shits their collective pants at how fast he is. He's only appears fast because the rest of Munster run 3 metres and then fall over. Of course, I could point out that in Croke Park last year when Leinster bullied Munster all over the pitch, Earls made a half-break and just as the commentator said "Earls has genuine pace", he was run-down and caught by 31-year-old Brian O'Driscoll, who was never known for his pace, after only 20 metres. If Vincent Clerk is on Earls wing today Ireland will quite simply lose.
A revised list of the 2009 Films of the Year: I know I didin't actually see it last year, but A Serious Man is just amazing. I hate the Coen brothers' inconsistency, but when they're good, they make movies like Fargo, Miller's Crossing, Big Lebowski, Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There and this one, A Serious Man. I thought it was fairly straight forward, but nobody else did (just remember the quote the film opens on, that brings everything into focus). It is two hours of psychological abuse but not in a bad way. Like psychological abuse with a big smile on its face.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans: See this film. Just stop what you're doing and see it. The original Bad Lieutenant was made by Abel Ferrara, and was about Harvey Keitel taking drugs, putting his filthy dick into various tomatoes and investigating nuns. It was big on the usual Ferrara topics of vice, religious absolution being more important than federal justice and of course lurid sex with teens and nuns and stuff. Let me tell you about Abel Ferrara. Ferrara made Driller Killer, which was one of the original "video nasties" unreleased in the UK (it's well shit, raih), and one time found himself unable to get a movie made so he directed a porno. The first Ferrara film I saw was on TG4 when I was about 13, called Ms. .45. It's about a mute girl who gets raped on the way home one time, and to make it worse, then gets raped again at home to make sure. Then she goes around dressed like a prostitute and starts shooting men. It's oddly compelling if you don't mind watching a 2 hour silent scream. Ferrara's movies are that kind of football. Ferrara also made King of New York, in which Christopher Walken takes time out from baking chicken to run a Harlem drug ring while Horatio Kane chases him down. He's probably best known for making Bad Lieutenant though. Werner Herzog never saw that movie, but he still made a sequel to it in which a wild-eyed, hunchbacked Nick Cage takes drugs off the naked body of Eva Mendes and watches breakdancing ghosts with Xzibit. I don't think it's a comedy. Cage pulls a gun on everyone from a pharmacist to an old incapacitated woman in a wheelchair with a breathing tube (which he takes out and twists, for no reason). It takes an odd turn at one point into what appears to be an extended dream sequence but turns out not to be. Quite simply bananas. See it.

Riddell or Schutt?

2010-02-06T00:42:00.005Z

Do you know what I do? I do very little. You might think I'd be ok with that, because I don't really want a job, as such. Nobody wants a job. I think its humanity's real tragedy that while we are the only animals to have a concept of "freedom", we are the only animals that are not free. Apart from the animals in the zoo, but that's our fault too. Nature apparently didn't account for humans. Humans try to influence the natural order, by saving endangered species, like the Polar bear (If you think it's endangered, you've to agree with Sarah Palin). It's a fallacy to assume that all endangered species are in such a position due to the encroachment or activities of humans. Some species are just unnaturally delicious. Some just serve no function. Some, like the panda bear, don't even feel like mating, unless we force them as if we really need pandas. Just think about it, do we really miss the dodo? Of course not. Would anyone miss the polar bear? The domestic cat? Us? Me?

Anyway, as any ad man will tell you, a man buying a drill doesn't want a drill, he wants a hole. I don't want a job, I want the benefit of having a job: money, a reason to get up in the morning, and of course the fringe benefit that is secret Santa. Nobody likes to work. It's not natural. You don't see monkeys building vast jungle economies that serve no purpose other than to feed the idea that "society" needs money to work, in a self-fulfilling prophesy so strong that it justifies everything from prostitution through slavery to war. The odd thing is that I don't even want a job to buy stuff, I never bothered with stuff, unless I was buying it for someone else. That's true. I wrote down a list of the things that I want and that I will do when I finally do get the opportunity to hate my job.

An apartment
A gym membership
A new pair of kidneys

These are not lofty and impossible dreams, or shouldn't be, these are things that will make my life better. Wanting a new pair of shoes when you already have perfectly good footwear won't make your life better, it's greedy, but wanting a gym membership? Is being happy greedy? The things I want will make me happy, happier than a Ferrari stuffed with a Lamborghini could ever make even the most grossly overpaid England captain's jilted ex-wife, but I don't think wanting these particular things makes me greedy. But I think I don't think a lot of things.

But I don't have a job. What I do have is a creeping depression. Want to know what I do? I stay up all night. I don't really do anything, I just keep myself awake, because if I go to sleep, before I know it I'll be awake again, and it'll be a new day where I have no reason to exist other than to apply for jobs with companies who don't even acknowledge me. When I was growing up I was never one of those kids who was told they're the best thing since sliced bread, I was one of those kids who was told to shut up all the time (can't you tell?). My teachers told me that reverie is a bad thing. And now I spend every day filling out applications, writing letters, filling in forms for companies that don't even have the courtesy to tell me I'm not good enough. I don't even bother with girls for the same reason, but it's like day after day, waiting for someone that's not going to call, wasting my time, I feel like I'd be better off writing letters to Santa rather than Red C, whoever the fuck they are. I don't even want to work for them, but at the same time, I want nothing more. And all the while, it must be said, if I were in their shoes, I wouldn't employ me either. But then again, I don't talk to myself very often.

That's how it goes. So what I've taken to doing is staying up all night looking at stuff I'd "like" to buy. From the strictly hypothetical position of someone who has: A. money or B. material wants, I scour the internet, looking at, neigh becoming obsessed with things that I can't afford and would never actually buy. And then I realised that I can't even do that right. I feel like I should look at fuggin air planes or tropical islands or something, shouldn't I? Instead I look at American football helmets, guitars, video cameras, books about beer pong.

I mean, American football helmets look pretty cool. There's two kinds, replica and authentic. Authentic are the same as the ones pros wear on field, which is pretty cool, but when you investigate you learn a number of increasingly disappointing facts. The first is that the padding inside is inflated, which means to wear one and look like a (pretend) NFL superstar (I'm projecting) you need to make a continuous masturbatory gesture. The next thing is that the logos are stickers. The wealthiest sport on the earth, with millions of dollars of investment into protective technology, has helmets with Fisher Price Baby's First Printing Press decals? How disappointing. That's not as disappointing as the final, deal-breaking point: To protect themselves against Sue Nation (Sioux Nation if you support the Redskins) litigation, the manufacturers install an immoveable "No Wear Bar" in every collectible helmet, so you don't put it on and end up hurting yourself, presumably by testing it out. What's the point in having one then? As if I nor anyone else who saw a football helmet on the table wouldn't try to put it on. Where do you think we are, Sweden?

Beer pong on the other hand, is just insulting. I remember vividly (as the only sober person) watching the Americans in Kyoto play it, all the shouting and high-fiving. You're throwing a plastic ball into a paper cup, show some decorum. It's easily the least interesting thing I've ever seen. In Stradbally I've played Beer Darts, where each participant starts with 501 and has to check-out, like in normal darts, only the person with the most still on the board after each throw has to drink a shot. You know what inspired that? Real life darts. Even though the dartboard is in a room separated from Liam's living-room by a whole other room, I've seen darts land on the coffee table. Anyway, one time I kicked an out-of-date frozen sausage over an industrial estate wall, so bouncing a small ball into a cup isn't going to do it for the likes of me.

But when you're kicking sausages and it doesn't even seem unusual, you have to wonder where did it all go wrong? Even if I knew, I can't go back to fix it until I get my masters in Time Travel from MIT. The real question then is what do I do to get out of the present? Everything is wrong and I don't know how to fix it.

The X [blank]iest Ys of 200Z

2010-01-12T21:13:00.006Z

2010 is already better than 2009, and 2010 is rubbish. Let me explain: Did you see that jerk? The one who fell on the news?

I did, and now everyone has. To be fair, a lot of people have fallen on the ice and there are many reasons for this. Shoes wear out. Bad balance. Severe ineptitude. I casually avoided falling thanks to my digitigrade characteristics, my feline poise and grace, not to mention my whiskers and retractable claws. Did I mention my real name is Mittens. Meow. But this guy laughs in the face of ice covered footpaths. He basically sprints around the corner like Usain Bolt. Probably before he entered stage right he yelled "look out below". Boingboing called the crew that captured the fall "a bunch of sickos" for not warning him. Wha? The whole country is covered in ice, the clue is the ice. What kind of idiot doesn't know that it's slippery and needs to be warned? That said, in the spirit of Johnathan Edwards over here 2010 shall be the Year of Casual Disregard for One's Own Wellbeing *smashes plate over head, leaps from first floor window*

Last year wasn't very good. It was especially a particularly bad year for both movies and movie criticism. I'll explain the latter later, Lefleur. First, it's time for the top 5 films of 2009.

5.Big Fan: This film is fairly insane, not that insane. If you ever wanted to see sporting fanaticism taken to its illogical extreme then this is the movie for you. Sure, you could let the fact that it's about American football put you off, but don't. You could certainly let the fact that Patton Oswald is the lead in it put you off, but enough about Big Fan, what did you think of Big Fan? What do you mean it wasn't released. Oops.
4. Observe & Report: The best film of this or any year really, is fourth on last year's list. This film is proper insane, in a way that most films can only dream about. I love the fact that a canny marketing campaign based around Seth "so hot right now, I'll have to take off my cardigan" Rogen probably got a lot of people in the cinema expecting another silly dickjoke comedy where Rogen acts with his eyebrows and chuckles like a gravel mixer. Instead, you got a pitch black "comedy?" about a mental patient with a messianic complex. Awkward hilarity(?) and homicidal rage ensue. I've got it on repeat in my brain right now. Try watching with your African housemate Pete to learn the correct usage of the phrase "Oh snap son!".
3. Låt den rätte komma in: Yeah, I know it's about vampires, but don't let that put you off. This is Swedish child vampyres (or something). It's a bit nuts, but it's also one of the most beautifully shot films ever made. Somehow the kids are really good at acting, imagine that, but Animal Actors lost some work to a computer. Catch it before the inferior Hollywood version comes and unnecessarily ruins it all.
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox: A real film for kids, as opposed to a kid's film like Up. So artistic. Wes Anderson's best film since Rushmore, and probably the only kid's film I'd actually want to watch every Christmas. It's a little strange, but it is Roald Dahl, and you should really be grateful for that.
1. District 9: The best film of last year, is also the best film of any year this year. Probably the most entertaining action movie since Die Hard. I couldn't be happier that it wasn't set in America, adding to the feeling that you're really experiencing something different. Wikus transforming from star-struck camera virgin to one-man shrimp-of-war is remarkably Kafkaesque. Yes, a Franz Kafka reference. That's going to make you sit in the dark watching an Afrikaaner eating catfood and aborting alien fetuses. Fetii? Fookh.

Satisfied? I had my fun, that's all that matters. So what was that about criticism? Here are some films that made other lists that I just couldn't agree with, and then wrote about that fact in this post you're now reading.

Inglorious Basterds: made the Filmdrunk list as a matter of loyalty to Tarantino. Its Empire review makes it sound like the best film ever, then they only give it 4 out of 5 and say it's not a masterpiece. It's just so overly justified, as if they're trying to convince themselves that they liked it. My biggest problem with it was that it was called Inglorious Basterds. That suggests that it would be about the Inglorious Basterds. But it's not. It's not about anything. The basterds are barely in it, but they're in it too much, because they're a bunch of bastards. The best thing about it is the Jew Hunter, an Austrian guy who is just amazing in it. Did you get that? The best thing about a film about a bunch of Nazi-killing American mercenaries is a Nazi. I still can't abide that scene in the bar that goes on for a whole hour and ends with the Italian chef bursting out of the kitchen with a jar of sauce yelling, "when'sa youra Dolmio dayo?". Needless.
Hurt Locker: This seems like a decent if not mesmeric movie. But the Empire review actually ruins the two best scenes in it. Nice one mate.
Up: Sorry but this is just a kid's movie. It's silly, it has a talking dog, a 4,000 year old man and a pensioner who talks to his house as if it were his dead wife. Critics keep banging on about how it made them cry in the first 10 minutes. What, you didn't know that everyone gets old and dies? Really? Really? What's sad about that? Why do you even get up in the morning then, knowing? I didn't like Carl. At all. All he had to do was walk across the street with that kid and it was game over. Instead he had to lie to him and beat about the face a man who was trying to help him. After that, he imagines killing the kid and turns his hearing aid off when the kid was trying to warn him about flying into a storm. Then he destroys his own home, deciding that an inconsequential bird was more important, kills his hero to death and steals his blimp. Literally 100 animals were killed in the making of this film. The only respite was Dug, and they couldn't even give him a proper name like Alan or Doug, and that bit where they fix Alpha's voice and he sounds like Jigsaw from the Saw films. "Hello Carl, I'd like to play a game". Now there's a movie.
Adventureland: It's not as good as Zombieland, which is one cameo appearance away from being a very ordinary movie. And I simply can't believe that any straight man would have chosen Kristen Stewart over Lisa P.

And I leave you with the best cinema moment of last year (that I could find on Youtube). Enjoy!

In case you were wondering what the Red Mist looked like, Voilà

2010-01-05T16:03:00.010Z

Brian Lenihan has cancer. That's bad. But what's also bad are the effects of the budget he instigated, many of which kicked in over the past few days. Now, if you're like me, you live in Ireland, and if you're in Ireland you are in the Land of The Insincere. You see, if someone an Irish person hates, someone who literally did a shit on your mum, got ill or died, you'd still go to the funeral, and you'd stand there with the other people whose mums were collectively shat upon and you'd say something like, "God, isn't it a terrible, terrible thing, a terrible, terrible thing. Sure, wasn't he a great fella, a true poet and a gentle hand to all that passed. He was never wanting for a friend and many are those who missed his kind face and gentle way. Once, didn't he extract a single fathead fish, the ugliest fish known to man, from a plastic sixpack binding? He did, and I said, fair play to him. T'was a rare creature that didn't lie on its back at night, moaning his name" or something. And I hate it. Charlie Haughty, that was a good one. A quarter of a million people watched his funeral on tv, despite the fact that he spent the last decade of his life being unfurled as an increasingly evil, dirty political bastard who (allegedly) had opponents and people he didn't like much murdered by the IRA. But, then again, he did die, and isn't that a terrible, terrible thing? He could have been Pope, Ted.

Nobody would wish cancer on somebody, and if they did and that person did get cancer, the wishmaker person would probably be all like, "Holy fuck". I've had 3 grandparents and 1 uncle die from cancer. For Lenihan to think he can continue in office fighting the condition is, simply, selfish and misguided. What Ireland needs is a man or woman to step up and fill his role, in Lenihan's interest as well as our own. The reality is that the stress of his political position is a contributing factor to the onset of the disease. In all our interests, get out of office and get well soon.

The outpouring of emoticons in the press is making me feel a little ill myself. Some moron on the radio called him a hero. A. Hero. A hero. A hero. A hero? What? He drew up a budget that offered no incentive to start the economy, butchered the pubic sector, and then went after the elderly, the sick, the blind, the young unemployed and mothers. Then he got ill. An ill butcher is still a butcher. He's not Lance Armstrong or Neil Armstrong or even Louis Armstrong. In the barber's, the tabloid that does the soccer news (I didn't bother learning its name) had the secondary headline, "'I'll defeat it or it'll defeat me', declares defiant Brian". Obviously the guy writing the headline only read as far as "or". Either that or he found a new use for the word "defiant". Maybe that makes the writer a hero too.

Anyway, I took my diseased kidneys to the bank today, and got a surprise. Under the old scheme, I received a whopping €53.30 in social welfare, for the privilege of living no life in a country that has failed me and my master's degree totally. The budget stated a decrease of 3.5% -4.2%. So I went in and received €45. For about 0.1 of a second, the red mist threatened to descend. This has already got me black-listed from one country. But then I realised I wasn't that surprised. For the record, and I want all of this on the record, €8.30 is the amount I was decreased. That's not 3.5% to 4.2%. It's not even 10%. It's a staggering 15%.

After I staggered home, I took a closer look at my docket and my options. I realised what the bastards had done. I am not entitled to the full rate of receipt based on a scheme of "means testing". This implies that payment should be made based on what my single-income family earns gross, not net. Gross pay for my father is obviously relatively high, but net is a whole other story. As a civil servant, he is taxed at a higher rate than anyone else in the same private sector earnings bracket. So because he pays for Blackie and Tatiana's scotch (and if the smell and vernacular of the Laois social welfare office is anything to go by that's not nearly as racist as it sounds), he's expected to fork out more money on top of that for me to live a semblance of life, filled with empty sadness. That's quite simply retarded, Mr. President.

So what happened was, some four-eyes with a calculator tabbed up the means and decided that because I live at home and have excellent prospects (no kidding), he concluded that my "means" tabulated to €151 per week. This ostensibly amounts to the money my parents spend on food, housing and clothing so that I don't have to. Now, I'm not going hungry, but I don't fucking want to live at home, and I have literally bought 1 jumper since I finished college. It's very hard to have a life on €53.30 per week. Let's see how €45 works out. And here's where the ridiculous becomes red-mistifiying: The original €53.30 was found by taking €151 from the old basic social payment of €204.30. The new figure of €45 is found by taking €151 from the new basic payment of €196. Did that click? €196 is a 4.2% reduction of €204. So if you were entitled to the highest payment, you lost 4.2%. As the payment goes down the scale, the percentage you have taken from your despairing hands increases, until you've lost 15% or more, or what little they debased themselves to offer.

So what can I do about it? Because I don't know enough French people, I can't have a riot, which is the first thing I would have liked to do (last August). The Irish people are such a bunch of stupid pricks they can't stir themselves enough to act on the talk going on in every meeting point in the country. Stop talking about and just do something, for Jesus' sake. So no. So I rang the council and asked if I could be reassessed since my father's wages are being cut by what the medical profession terms "a fortune", but [alarm bells ring] I'd have to send a whole load of forms and stuff to somewhere in Dublin for that, where, presumably, the most foureyed of them all sit in a darkened room with the largest possible calculators, and a simple mantra of "not a penny more". That's what happened when I tried to get a medical card. Oh, yeah, did I mention that every month I have to buy medication totalling €120? That's almost 3 weeks payments. Brian, why do you want me to die?

So here is how to fix the government's woes. I personally guaran-goddamn-tee that the Irish population would be so in favour of this that they'll call Brian Lenihan a hero. And it's based on your idiotic notion of sliding scale/increasing reductions.

First, consider this: why do government ministers and affiliates, like, you know, their wives, get all expenses paid? Ministers earn €191,417 per year. I won't offend you, my readers by offering what our Taoiseach earns (you'll break your jaw on the floor). If you earn €191,417, why do you get your expenses paid? You can afford things people only dream about and yet you don't have to ever spend. Don't you feel left out? All that lovely stuff and some other gentlemen and women paying for it all. Imagine that. You earn all that pretty money and must have nothing to spend it on. So why don't the expenses count against the salary? You could consider your salary your "means", because that's what they are, and when you have all that delicious money, you can use it to pay your mortgage, your petrol, hotel rooms, limos, secretaries, pens, all that crazy stuff. You can even pay for your kid's stuff since you love that shit so much! So we could take that out of your payments, and leave you with the remainder to take home. The more expenses you claim, the less you keep. For those of you who have expenses totalling more than your salary, first of all: how do you sleep at night? Secondly, fuck you. Thirdly, you should have to pay it all back, every last penny while I personally beat you about the face. I should threaten to break your legs, and, to show you that I'm serious, I'll break both your arms right now for a mere €45. Tighten your belts. Be smart with your money. Isn't that what the people, the people who believed your lies and put you where you are, are being told? Well hold up whey-face, I'm calling the bear and we're going to take all your honey, honey. The decadence is over, ladies and gentlemen; ladies and gentlemen, let's get decadent.

Only it's not, is it. Politics used to mean something. Great men would work for free to serve the community and its people. Gladstone. Pierce. Parnell. But now? I'm never going to vote again in my life. We won't be naming any streets after Lenihan or his greedy freeloading thieves, no matter what they eventually die of.

My (One and Only) Talent

2009-12-29T16:16:00.006Z

As mentioned in my love letter to Tim Tebow (Tim, call me back), I play fantasy football on Yahoo. Well the league ended last night, and I, the man who usually writes the posts on this site and some of you call "friend", others make up names for, and still others can't remember the name of, won. There's a lot of subclauses in there, so to break it down: I won. I'm the best at fantasy football. In my first season, I beat real-life Americans at a game I don't even like. A knowledge based game, granted, but still.

And to prove that my team is the Red V:

Now, of course, I've won, so I'll probably never bother playing again. What's the point? I've already won. Do I need to win it again? Is it like when a team other than Manchester United wins the Premiership and then all the Man U fans come at you like a jilted astronaut? "Yeah, you've won it but a real champion retains the title". Then when you do so, like Arsenal and Chelsea both did this decade, they retort, a real champion wins the league 10 times in 18 years (or whatever it is). Eventually so many caveats are introduced that you come to the conclusion that a typical Manchester United fan believes that the only real champion can only ever be Manchester United. Luckily for me, I don't follow soccer, so I'll take my trophy-less, fantasy victory over people I don't even know and retire undefeated. In fairness, I whipped everyone's arse, scoring more total points, winning more games and holding the top points scoring QB, WR, HB, TE, K(icker) and D in the game. Man against boys, people.

This comes hot on the heels of me winning my fantasy NRL league, with my team, the Red V. The Red V is the nickname of the Saint George - Illawarra Dragons NRL club, so called because their jersey contains every combination of shapes, letters and colours apart from a Red V, hence the ironic name. One of my opponents asked me why I named my team after the lady pantaloon region. Red V? Really, that never crossed my mind, because I'm not 15. Anyway, that's really more of an alizarin.

Still, I'm now a champion at two different disciplines. Look out, Michael Phelps. In terms of talent, you could say it's one of the more pointless. But look at it my way, I'm not wasting it am I, like one of those potentially world champion tobogganists from the Sahara? I'm kicking all kinds of arse, across two continents, in two sports I don't even know a single person I can have a coherent conversation with on the subject of. That's a lot of prepositions. In America, they pay guys to talk about fantasy football, and do you know how I won? I completely ignored them. Michael Fabiano can smell my Brett Favre. If I listened to him I think I would have lost every game I played, which is infuriating. The longer I go on the dole, the more annoying it becomes to see people occupying jobs despite lacking the interest or acumen to perform them. My favourite one is that guy Tom Doorley, the restaurant critic for the Independant, who calls himself a wine critic despite the fact that he couldn't tell a Spanish Riocca from a week old fart sealed in an old Sprite bottle hidden behind a secondary-school radiator. I guess he knew a guy who knew a guy, that's the only way to get a job in the first place.

Since I'm a multi-discipline world public league champion and blogger I will now aggressively pursue Michael Fabiano's job. This is because I personally think Fabiano is a dickhead. He and another guy go on NFL Network on a Tuesday, during garbage time, on a show hosted by Lindsay "Tom Terrific Tom Terrific Brady... eh," Soto, who is the only woman in the network and knows literally nothing about NFL or any of its players, and the lot of them talk utter shite. That could be me. I can do that, I'm doing it right now. If more proof is needed, I won a Football Manager (the most difficult game ever) season with West Ham and PSG no less before, and one time Liam was playing it and losing all the time and I said I could do better so he said "prove it" and I won 8 games in a row with his team and then left. If even more proff is needed I heap good spell end I grammar have deadly.

It's Nearly Christmas

2009-12-21T17:43:00.008Z

As I sit here watching a Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, I have to admit, it's doesn't feel like Christmas. In fact, I have to say, since Katy Perry started dating Russell Brand, everything has felt wrong, and I no longer believe in anything. Halloween didn't feel like Halloween, and I'm pretty sure Thanksgiving doesn't exist. Did anyone even remember to celebrate the feast of St. Theophanes and companions? Thanks a lot, Katy. Christmas is the only time of the year that religious and non-religious people can agree on one thing: party! Only this year, and I speak entirely for myself here, Christmas is being shit. Why is everything so expensive? Was it like this last year? Wait, where did the money go? Why did the bad men take my dole? Daddy, where's Christmas?

Anyway, out of a sense of obligation, with another "Imagination Christmas" looming, take it away Mike!

Mike, who is now studying law, is the beacon that Christmas has arrived. In many ways, he is a symbol of our times. There he is, dressed as Santa, a marketing tool devised by the Coca-Cola company to shift product and now a luminescent indication of the commodification of Christmakkwanza. His leap is short, but his motivation is unclear. What's he trying to do? Land on the table? Leap over the table? Cut his back? We'll never know [unless we ask]. In any case, much like over-indulged capitalism, it doesn't end well for our intrepid adventurer.

I don't want a lot for Christmas. What I think everyone should get is a belt with one less notch in it, forcing us all to tighten up. I know the government needs us to spend to get some money into the economy but FUCK ALL DEM BASTERDS! The sooner they're out ,the better for everyone. All I want for Christmas is a new government, a career, a home, JohnJoe to fix my clocks, a horse-drawn Hummvee, Ireland in the World Cup, and Christina Aguilera to return my calls floating in perfume served in a man's hat. That's not so much to ask for is it?

Heads of State Pause Their Limos at Their Personal Jets to Denounce Fossil Fuel Use

2009-12-15T17:40:00.006Z

Having toyed with the idea of a post on the pointless Copenhagen Climate Gathering, and ultimately concluding that I shouldn't bother because whenever I show any kind of scepticism toward the greedy manipulation parade that is environmentalism it's treated as though I'm a climate change denier, I invite Gregg Easterbrook, author of essential gridiron column Tuesday Morning Quarterback and various environment and economics books, to say what I think for me. And by that I mean I copied and pasted a bit from today's TMQ. I love his dig at Al "look ma, no sincerity" Gore.

As the Copenhagen climate summit grinds on with -- big surprise! -- nothing specific agreed upon, here's my summary of what you need to know about the global warming issue, bearing in mind yours truly is the author of an 800-page book about environmental policy (that book was so fast-paced, it only seemed like 700 pages):
• There is indeed a strong scientific consensus regarding climate change. The deniers simply aren't honest about this.
• The consensus is that in the last century, air has warmed by about one degree Fahrenheit while the oceans have warmed a little and become slightly acidic; rainfall patterns have changed in some places, and most though not all ice melting has accelerated.
• That consensus is significant, but hardly means there is a crisis. Glaciers and sea ice, for example, have been in a melting cycle for thousands of years, while air warming has so far been good for farm yields. The doomsayers simply aren't honest about how mild the science consensus is.
• Predictions of global devastation -- climate change is a "profound emergency" that will "ravage our planet" -- are absurd exaggerations, usually motivated by political or fund-raising agendas.
• Climate change has serious possible negative consequences, especially if rainfall shifts away from agricultural regions.
• Global poverty, disease, dirty air and lack of clean water in developing world cities and lack of education are far higher priorities than greenhouse gas emissions.
• Smog and acid rain turned out to be far cheaper to control than predicted; the same may happen with greenhouse gases.
• The United States must regulate greenhouse gases in order to bring American brainpower, in engineering and in business, to bear on the problem.
• A carbon tax, not some super-complex cap-and-trade scheme that mainly creates jobs for bureaucrats and lawyers, would be the best approach.
• If the United States invents technology to control greenhouse gases, no super-complex international treaty will be needed. Nations will adopt greenhouse controls on their own, because it will be in their self-interest to do so. Smog and acid rain are declining almost everywhere, though are not governed by any international treaty; nations have decided to regulate smog and acid rain emissions on their own, because it is in their self-interest to do so.
As for the e-mails hacked from a greenhouse research center in the United Kingdom, e-mails are private correspondence. Copying them without permission is at the least unethical, and perhaps a crime. If you saw private letters on someone's desk, photocopied them and posted them on the Web, you would be considered a person of low character. Whoever hacked the climate e-mails is at the very least an unethical person of low character, and one should be wary of the agendas of unethical people.
That said, many climate scientists are rigidly ideological and believe dissent must be shouted down. This is partly because of money and privilege. The United States and European Union spend about $6 billion annually on climate change research, and every penny goes to alarmism, because it can be used to justify government expansion. Being a climate doomsayer is a path to cash and tenure -- even to celebrity, as making wildly exaggerated claims got Al Gore a Noble Prize plus stock in companies now winning government subsidies triggered by alarmism. The doomsayers are lauded by foundations, go to parties with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and attend taxpayer-subsidized conferences in Nice. They've formed a guild with intense focus on maintaining guild structure. The 1962 Thomas Kuhn book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is best-known for introducing the "paradigm shift" concept. Kuhn's larger argument was that science is not an abstract truth-seeking realm, rather, subject to fads and what is now called political correctness, and one in which many scientists are concerned foremost with safeguarding their sinecure by toeing the line.
Plus the alarmists need to divert attention from the inconvenient truth that 20 years ago, Gore and James Hansen of NASA began to say that without immediate drastic action against greenhouse gases, there would soon be global calamities. Nothing was done -- and no problem so far. That is no reason to be complacent -- warming-caused problems may be in store. But for the self-interested alarmists, this is a reason to shout down their critics.
Footnote: John Siemieniec of West Dundee, Ill., was among many readers to note the 140 private jets and 1,200 limos at the climate summit. World leaders and celebrities rode in comfort to a conference to wag their fingers about how somebody else should stop wasting fossil fuel.

Gah! I can't do it! Here's what I think:

I don't believe people should be taxed for their use of "carbon" (INSANE! Let's tax everyone who breathes out) when there's no alternative. I shouldn't be taxed for energy use when I have no alternative to the power that's generated by the ESB, unless I go get a degree in engineering and put in my own wind mill at tremendous expense.
It is the government who should be responsible for providing clean energy to its people, not the people's responsibility to conserve unclean energy.
How do environmentalists justify their use of paper pamphlets and cotton bags? Do you really think cotton is better than plastic? Ever hear of the Aral Sea?
Every time there's any kind of summit like this, anywhere, huge numbers of protesters from around the world attend, and invariably riot. Then when the rioting is quelled, somebody calls out the police for "heavy-handed tactics". What tactics would they recommend for people who set barricades alight? I don't understand the media's glorification of unwashed beardies. Get a job, hippy. Look at this Guardian bullshit, subtitled "concerns grow of police crackdown". Hello? I like how the first paragraph (both sentences of it) talk of barricades being burned and missiles being thrown at police (as seen on tv), but of course all the detainees were delicate flower children. To that I say, "fuck" and "off". At least the anti-capitalists, who rarely see a window they wouldn't throw a bin through , are there to take the blame. The fact of the matter is that mass protests of any kind are a magnet to dickheads who listen to too much RAtM. They will be in the minority, but if trouble kicks off near the peaceful protesters then tough titties, lock them all up. One coin alone, and all that.
How do people have any time for Al "cheerio, chaps" Gore? He won a Noble Peace Prize, for the peace-furthering act of giving a powerpoint presentation of someone else's work. His electricty bill is pretty mental.
How come the alternative view is completely ignored? Is it because too many people believe that if they turn the lights off and don't leave the telly on stand-by they'll save the world, despite China emitting a coal cloud so large that it's visible from space? Turning off every light in Ireland won't stop that one, boyo.

Girls are tougher than Tigers

2009-12-09T14:36:00.011Z

Tiger Woods. Is anyone really surprised? In the past I've thrown my hands up in frustration over Australian sports people. But what really makes me throw my hands back (and shout) is American sports people. Wit:

OJ "The Juice" Simpson. Juice was the first person ever to run for 300 yards in a single game of American football, and is the only player ever to run for over 2,000 yards in a 14 game season. FOURTEEN GAMES PEOPLE! I know people who don't walk 2km in a full calendar year. And he did this while playing for Buffalo, a team so bad that Vincent Gallo was sent to jail just for believing in them. When he quit, he pulled a Jim Brown and moved into acting, and lo, he was quite good at it.

Then of course, well:

He murdered his wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman
He wrote a book about how he did it
He broke into a hotel room to steal back some memorabilia he had just sold to a guy
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, even though he's in jail

You see, they kept his bust in Canton because in terms of your average American sports star, bless him, Juice actually wasn't so bad.

Mike Tyson: Iron Mike fought every fight like it was his last, but not because he laid it all on the line in the "go out there and die for it" kind of 110% dedication fashion, more so in the in "constant state of impending incarceration" kind of way. Tyson was, to be fair to him, a guy who got punched in the face of a living, so he was always liable to be a bit of a head-the-ball. Like Tiger and Juice he was prodigiously talented, becoming the youngest undisputed, unified world heavy-weight champion in the history of boxing. Then he raped a woman, maybe two or three more, went to jail and converted to Islam. When he came back, he had developed a taste for human flesh, and was evidently utterly insane. And they said getting punched in the head was a bad thing. It was later revealed that he was angry all the time because he had an enlarged medulla oblongata, not because he had all those teeth and no toothbrush, and also that if he could turn back the clock on his mother's stair-pushing he would certainly reconsider it.

Micheal Vick: I'm sure we all know this one, since it was so recent, but Vickus Van Der Moron was a poor kid from the Virginia projects, who used to dog fight. When he became a 3-time pro-bowl QB for ATL, it was found at that he still fought dogs. The things he did to them would make shocking reading, I'm sure, if you're sick enough to want to find out. He did 2 years for fighting dogs, despite the fact that Donté Stallworth actually killed a real human guy and only got a 1 year suspension from football and zero jail time. Nice job, America. An incredible talent, Vick was so popular that he had his own brand of sweat-shop-produced shoes (not that anyone goes to jail for that kind of thing mind), and was on the cover of Madden Football. The Madden curse struck that year and he broke his leg. He was undeniably a dickhead and growing up in a project doesn't make what he did ok in my book, but now he's actually back in the NFL, playing for everyone's (i.e. no one's) favourite team, Philadelphia.

Ron Artest: Artest is, and I don't mean to judge here, an utter bastard. Another guy who uses his project background to justify the fact that he likes to punch stuff, Artest once asked time off from playing basketball (you know, his job) so he could promote his rap album. His most famously infamous action was starting and prolonging a mass brawl that involved him leaping into the crowd and punching a guy in the face. The single worst thing about this is that I can't find a single video of this on youtube that doesn't have awful hip-hop playing over it.

I could go on (Pacman Jones anyone?), but I should probably mention Tiger Woods at this point. Tiger earns infinity dollars for a game that involves swinging a thin metal stick so as to direct a tiny sphere into a hole in the ground. Now, if that were me, I think I'd probably lose all semblance of reality. He puts a ball into a small hole, achieving absolutely nothing, and gets paid more than everyone else on this list combined. I think it's to be expected that he would feel free to do what he likes whenever he likes. For example, he calls himself Tiger. His real name is Eldrick. I would have gone all in with "Professor Caligula Tigris de Gaul" but I've got more imagination.

This is his (presumably soon to be ex-)wife:

But he chose to sleep with:

Now, I'm no expert, but... why? Did you see that last two? They are both pornographic actresses. Hasn't he seen 9to5? Is he straight up mentally ill? Did he see his wife? This probably isn't the full list either, which may be difficult to deduce from the common characteristics of leathery skin and fake everything. At least one may be an actual doll.

The thing is that there's more to it than this. When mandatory drug testing was introduced last year, Tiger had elective surgery that kept him out for 8 months. While those 8 months were good to Padraig Harrington, it was widely mooted that Tiger took the time off to allow traces of prohibited substances to leave his system. And if I know anything about obscenely wealthy American sports stars, there's a distinct possibility that he'll straight-up murder somebody at some stage. The thing is, nobody should be surprised at any of this, and also, nobody should care. It's only golf after all.

CARRICKMINES, CARRICKMINES! ROOF IN FACE

2009-11-30T21:25:00.003Z

Do your fucking job

Does anybody take bleedin’ pride in their bleedin’ work? My pal’s mother spent thous of euro on getting an extension on the back of their house and the roof was leaking within two fucking days. That’s grand, I think. I mean, I practically expect builders to be shite now.

But this one just pisses me off. The roof? The fucking roof? The roof is supposed to protect the building from the wind. Instead, the apartments (which probably cost 400,000 euro or something) were without a roof because the wind blew. A nearby field had a roof in it because the wind was strong and high.

No injuries reported. Well, I’m heartbroken.

Brand new shampoo: The "Czar" of “Sprogs”

2009-11-17T22:12:00.001Z

Who breng sprogs? Seriously, I’ve lived in Dublin for twenty-two of my twenty-three years on this earth and I have never before a weeks ago heard the word “sprog” in my life. Well, maybe I did hear it at some stage but disregarded it as a mispronunciation of sponge or a sign of psychosis but now the facts can’t be ignored- fucking everyone is saying it. SPROGS? POPPING SPROGS? HAVING THE SPROGS? I understand that the word means baby from the context presented in stupid phrases from Declan, Maria and Sarah but now everyone seems to be saying it. Personally, I hate it. Bring back babby or bambino and let’s try and put this whole unfortunate experience behind us.

Since when is it vogue to use the word czar or tsar to describe a policy chief? From the way some sites are waffling on you’d swear Barry O’Bama has seven or eight Romanov dynasties working for him in the white house winter bleedin’ palace. Why am I not invited to the assemblies where these universally implemented journalistic conventions are unanimously adopted? Where’s my bloody press pass? Why is it czar/tsar and not its Germanic pal KAISER? Why has everyone who writes for the Guardian or whatever got a thing for Nicholas the 2nd ( the most recent Tsar I can think of)? And why have i still not decided on a transliteration system for Russian words in the English language? Where's the Russian-English equivalent of Pinyin? At least some variation would make things more exciting to read. Obama could be the first Obama, Clinton could be KAISER of war. Gates could be CAESARUS AUGUSTUS III of whatever he’s in charge of. And Biden? Biden is the Emperor-Biden-God-King-who will reign all (hair plugs or no hair plugs)...

Thanks for reading.

Watching Anime So You Don't (have to)

2009-11-11T15:28:00.006Z

I studied Japanese. I lived in Japan. I nearly died there. For 4 years people asked me what I studied, and when I said Japanese, the follow-up question would be either, "why?" or "do you like animé?". But no, I don't like animé. Animé is popular with retards. With society's losers. People who wear clothes with cat-ears attached or use Japanese words like "kawaii" in everyday speech deserve our derision. We should point at them in the street and laugh until they start to cry. To be perfectly honest, and to make a huge sweeping generalisation about a whole entertainment medium and its subscribers, I think it's mindless shit mass-produced for halfwits. But I digress. Actually I didn't, I just want to change the tone.

I've tried it before. But now I'm unemployed and I want to kick something when it's down. And since that asthmatic kitten was tougher than it looked, I'm going to give the lowest of the low a damn good thrashing. Animé perverts. Ok, I'll try to be a bit subjective. I'll even start with Ghost in The Shell, which was a pretty good movie.

Actually to start at the very beginning, when I began with Japanese, it turned out that I was in the minority not being a lonely animé bastard. So I tried it. The first one I watched was Full Metal Alchemist. I didn't make it through the first episode, but what I saw had a profound affect on me. My eyes widened. My heart opened and a new feeling began to flood in. I was addicted. I found the one thing I hated more than anything else. I had to bully every animé geek I could find. Now to the beginning.

Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex 2nd G.I.G
I hoped that the use of the word "gig" in the title meant that the crew would be using their magic eyes and telepathy to create a middling emocore band. Instead the key words were "Stand" as there is a lot of standing, and "complex" because it doesn't make a single lick of sense. This seems at first to be the exact same as the opening to the first film, and finishes kind of similarly, but I couldn't understand any of the middle bits, even though I speak Japanese and had English subs. Something about terrorism and politics. A strange move was to have the main character not take her clothes off even once, a rare example of the makers trying to make their animé less perverted. Even wierder is that there was actual justification for the nudity, which is an even rarer example of people in anime who should be naked being totally clothed. Hmm. Strange times.

Black Lagoon
Undeniably beautiful, Black Lagoon is set in a bizarre world where people covet Sony Minidiscs and the Filipino Navy is trying to prevent piracy. When the world's wettest blanket is held to ransom by pirates, his shady corporate employers attempt to get him and his minidisc cargo back, or run him over trying. Stockholm Syndrome sets in after a mere 7 minutes, and before you know it everyone's the best of friends, and the real bad guy is... big business. I've seen this movie before, have you? At one point a character says "this is much better than any movie". It's not.

Hanaukyo Maid Team
Best described with the phrase "oh no", this is relatively charming for the first minute and 40 seconds, as a child with no obvious eyes and whiting hair walks to his grandfather's house because his dead mother died to death. Then he arrives and even though he's, like, 6, he's encircled by a gaggle of maids, one of whom immediately shifts him. That they even animated the residual saliva is the first insult. The gist of this story, such as it is, involves an old git, the grandfather figure, whose wife leaves him because he's as boring as the guy in Up. He then shows her two fingers by populating his enormous mansion with naked maids. The boy now owns the house and all the maids too. His grandfather leaves him a tape, at the end of which he suggests that the boy should tap that shit (if I understand the phrase). Being an animé he decides to fall in love with the only one that is wearing clothes. The rest of the episode involved:
5 maids taking his pants off so he could use the loo.
him being washed by what appeared to be identical triplets, one of whom prelathers the soap on her own breasts
our hero being felled by "a tsunami of skin"
the act of a 10 year old boy losing his virginity to 3 maids. This is the final insult.
Things I learned: animé breasts all look the same. If you were going to argue in favour of animé, you're going to have to work a lot harder now, pervert. At least it was only 12 minutes long.

Itazura na Kiss
Worryingly billed as a "slice of life romantic comedy" (may God have mercy on us all), it is saved by clearly being for girls. Girls are, by definition, 75% less likely to be perverts than men, so that's good. It's all about the dreamy guy in the top class, who's like Japan's best sports and textual genius. He's so cool he doesn't even have to open his eyes the whole way, but leave them sort of 3/4 open, as if that's as much respect as he can give you (if only you could tame him?). But you're in the bottom class and your friend is a chubbs. Facepalm. It's like stepping into the mind of that ginger stalker I had, especially since the protagonist is a ginger too. And much in the same way as I threw her a verbal bone on Tuesday by saying hello to her (the last time I'll be in DCU mind), I sort of felt for the bimbo in this show. It's remarkably cruel for the first while, I'm guessing because it was written by a real-life lonely, speccy nerdlinger, aka losers in life but winners in self-pity. After a while Ginge gets over her daddy-complex enough to move in with her hunky piece of man crush while her house is being rebuilt following an earthquake. Like cringe! In a bizarre twist, the guy's mother is simultaneously stalking Ginge because she doesn't have a daughter. They probably end up together, but it's not like I'm going to watch a second episode. The alternative is that the inherent, latent, obsessive craziness exhibited in any stalker ultimately consumes them all. Still, when I look at the super-awesome genius dude she's stalking, I can appreciate that there but for the grace of the Hannuka Zombie go I. A lucky escape.

Lucky Star
Sweet Enola Gay, this is diabetes for the eyes. Hopefully intended for children, because if it isn't then it's more wrong than anything else ever, a series of small schoolgirls with gigantic eyes wander around being extremely sweet to the tune of no obvious plotting. How to eat a cream-puff becomes a 5 minute exercise in cuteness so faun-like you'll want to just smash this shows sugary fucking face. Hold on, they're supposed to be in high-school? I guess it's made for forever-babies. Add vinegar to taste, it's going to be a long journey.

Onegai Teacher
The reverse of Itzura na Kiss, an ubergeek sissy sits moping around all upset that the woman of his dreams won't just magically fall out of the sky and marry him. Try a hobby, pizzaface. Then a pink-haired (of course) star woman falls out of the sky. Oh fuck dude. From the Spider-Man school of logic, where the only thing you need to be buff and engaged is a plot device rather than putting a bit of effort into living a life, four-eyes over here gets to live on a spaceship and teach his hot alien teacher to make sweet love in the earthling manner. Utter shit from start to finish, proof that the geeks with kill us all with their confused longings and their ridiculous manifestations. Try talking to real girls, it's not so difficult. Sure they're not aliens, but you know the problem with aliens? Wrong answer, there's no such thing as aliens.

Midori no Hibi
AAaaaaaahhh! Another Itazura na Kiss, a girl, who appears to be a drawing of a doe, lusts over a blonde guy, who this time isn't a genius but a street-fighting master of karate and beating-you-up. The only thing Seiji is good at is kicking arse, so everyone, including the ladies are scared of him, leaving him all alone, bar his right hand. Then one day he wakes up and his right hand is the doe-girl who secretly loved him from afar. Did you hear? The chick is his hand. This show is fucking awesome. Even it's credits song wasn't crap. Starting off insane and opening the taps as wide as they'll go, it's a show about a guy with a hand-sized girl fused to his wrist by the power of her stalker-obsession with him. And all the while I think, there but for the grace of BO'D go I. Much nudity and Fight Club-style self-beating ensue. When gangbangers come to kick his arse for all the names he'd been taking, he uses the hand-chick's tiny head to fend off the blows. Amazing. It's also impossible to shake the feeling that he's just a dude who talks to his hand and imagines that it has boobs.

Strike Witches
The final insult, chosen because it would be a misrepresentation for me to not watch an animé about magical schoolgirls with animal ears and tails, this utter filth has a squad of cameltoed, trouserless teens fighting space-nazis in the sky. A lot of stuff blows up but it's 90% crotch, with low angles and a distinct lack of pants the order of the day. This is even worse than the maid one. You knew what was coming with the maid one. But the propensity for arse in this is ridiculous. Every shot is full of arse. It's wall to wall arse. When they fly it zooms in on the lady area. Where're the pants? To make it worse, you really know a show is being gratuitous when the character with the eye patch actually keeps raising it so she can see. Probably to better judge how far away the arses are. Awful stuff. Still, the upskirt 3:16 seconds in is the best, smoothest piece of animation I've seen all day. Maybe in later episodes they find where all the pants went, but it's too late. I've seen everything.

So there you have it. If you're thinking of watching animé: don't.

I Believe in Tim Tebow

2009-11-07T23:45:00.008Z

American Football. Now there's a game. People over here note that the players wear pads, but that's sort of missing the point. I know the hits in rugby are massive, but gridiron hits are different. Consider this: before a player is chosen to play in the NFL, they are scrutinised in terms of tangible performance metrics, how high they can jump, how fast they can run, how much they can lift, how many balls they can catch while blindfolded. They also break a mental sweat. After that they work out the most important facet, the edge any player needs to succeed: can he survive a single down of NFL without being killed?

What most people who think NFL is boring (it is) and takes too long (it does) don't seem to realise is that all of these guys are killing themselves. You remember the way John McCain can't raise his arms over his head because of Vietnam? Well John Elway can barely move either arm. Night-train Lane is in a wheelchair. Johnny Unitas is dead. It's sort of like the Large Hadron Collider: the NFL shapes the human body to the limit of its capacity then smashes it together head-first at incredible speed in the hope that bits'll fall off. NFL should be on the curriculum at medical schools in America. Did you know that the knee has 5 ligaments, the posterior and anterior cruciate ligaments, the lateral and medial collateral ligaments and patellar ligament? Well you can see them all when Lawrence Taylor breaks Joe Theismann's leg. It's the only time I've ever seen two stretchers come on for the same injury, one for the guy, the other for his leg.

But wait, I hear you say, who are any of these people? What is this blog even about? Where am I? Well shut up grandma. In general, the Irish level of knowledge on the game is low. When I play it on the lawn with my friends, the self-commentary goes sort of like, "Farve throws long! Caught by Dan Marino! Touchdown Los Angeles!" or some such rubbish. Lets just pause for that lead balloon to deflate.

Usually people only know the big names of a certain era, or a few choice highlight reel players for the team you "allegedly" follow. Sorry, mixed up my sarcastic quote-marks. You see, I play fantasy football. Fantasy football is like Dungeons and Dragons, only with more statistical analysis columns. Trying to figure out my starting line up each week requires 27 minutes of crying. I have acquired a raft of information on players I don't even think I've seen play, since I only watch Denver games and the Superbowl. Still I know who Danny Amendola is (the Italian Wes Welker). Fantasy Football is just so competitive that this kind of useless knowledge gives you a helping hand to mid-table mediocrity. The biggest selling weekly publications in America are fantasy football statistics records. There's so many columns and names it's ridiculous, but it allows you to make an informed decision. That's why this week I've started Chris Cooley, the Redskins H-back. Yeah, you see, he usually gets about 5 recs per game, but the Skins are playing the Eagles, the only team in the NFL that has a logo facing left, who are weak at safety and DE, so I'm expecting Cooley to make significant YAC (he's averaging 10.4 YAC as it is), which makes him a legitimate threat. I just hope Jason Campbell can perform the 5-step drop behind an overmatched line and pump-fake to the max to extend the play and avoid resorting to flea-flickers and end-around hand-offs on third-and-long situations. If he can, Cooley could be in for a big game between the hash, and maybe act as a deep-threat on coffin corner routes to the pylon. Fumble!

NFL is a bit boring itself anyway. I don't understand how Americans can call soccer boring (and I'm not suggesting it isn't by the way) when their popular sports are baseball and NFL, where a bunch of fat Italians play a game so physically undemanding that it can be played on consecutive days for a whole week and a 60minute game that takes over 3 hours respectively. Anyway, Since the attachment of my emotional bandwagon is purely coincidental rather than based on any sort of sense of pride of place or whatever, I've begun to see other teams behind Denver's back. To avoid detection (Denver are winning this year and I don't want to upset the football Gods), I do so in other leagues than the NFL. I began watching college football last season. If you think NFL games take too long (they do), and are a bit boring (they are), then college ball is a pretty good answer: it takes 2/3 the time and scores are like in Madden 2003, when you could score on the QB sneak every time.

Here's where Tim Tebow comes in. I've begun to follow the Florida Gators, based in Gainesville, largely because I like their jerseys. Tim, the Gators QB, is possibly the most talked about sportsman in America. Last year he delivered "The Promise" which seemed a bit gay at the time, it still does but it did then too, but they haven't lost a game since. He's since won a national championship and set a new record for scoring running tds, completely unheard of for a QB to do. When he got a concussion, people cried, and tv cameras showed him vomiting into a bucket for some reason. He's been on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice already.

Tim is the home-schooled son of a pair of religious fanatics, and has had a series of tough Christian values copperfastened directly to his soul. His dad even said he asked god for a preacher but got a quarterback. Now people are actually beginning to wonder: is he the son of God? Possibly. If there is going to be a new messiah, why not make it a football messiah? Obama's not working out. The way Tim has played and conducted himself in spite of ridiculous media scrutiny, especially coming from an enclosed childhood in religious centers, is incredible, and I say fair play to him.

But now for the bad news. The NFL Draft is the system whereby new players enter the league from college, like the Army draft only with more convicts and death. Tim is a hugely talented player and he'll go in the top 5 picks for sure, especially considering that people are going to come from miles around just to see his enormous head, something that would be a huge boost to loads of struggling teams. The thing is that in a league designed for parity, the shit teams get the first picks, so Tim will be scrambling and sack-fumbling from behind the lines of one of the following teams, in my estimation:

Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Tampa are probably never going to win a game again, ever, and they draft a quarterback in the first round every year. The thing is, Tim already plays in Florida and has a sizeable following, and nobody goes to Bucs games, probably because they go to Tampa Bay, a body of water, rather than the City of Tampa, the actual location of the team, so he'd be a huge draw. Hopefully the team'll go broke so they won't be able to afford to pay Tim first-pick money and we'll never have to see his magnificent jaw in pewter.
St. Louis Rams: more religious fanatics, Tim might not agree to sign, though, because the Rams are going to take his Christian butt to LA, which I hear is where the devil lives ("I want to go there"). They need a QB, but please don't go there Tim, their jerseys are rubbish.
Cleveland Browns: I don't think Cleveland could handle Tim and LeBron. A few weeks ago Braylon Edwards beat up an acquaintance of LeBron's and got traded to New York two days later. That's how big LeBron is. It was just an acquaintance, it wasn't like it was his mum or someone. And the Browns are just so awful, they don't even have cheerleaders, or logos on their helmets.
Washington Redskins: The skins are a total disgrace. First of all, they are located in an area spanning parts of Maryland and Virginia, around the Potomac. Secondly, Redskin is a derogatory name for native Americans. I don't think Tim should play for them, unless they change their name to the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons. Then I guess I'd be ok with it.
Tennessee Titans: Tennessee are so bad that in a game this year, they used two quarterbacks, ok? Quarterback is the guy who throws the ball, he's the only one, yeah? The ball is the brown thing with the laces. QBs are usually white. Tennessee started a white one, and he only threw it successfully to a player on his own team 2 times, out of 17 attempts. That's bad. These completed forward passes resulted in his team going backwards 7yards. That's also bad. He then threw the ball to the other team, an act known as throwing an interception, colloquially known as a "pick", the worst thing any qb can do. So they brought in a new guy. The new guy is black. That's bad. He didn't throw any passes to his own team, but did throw a pick. Are you getting this? At one point in the highlight reel, Deion Sanders actually says, "Oh snap son! Whuuut? That's kablamo". It is the single worst play by a qb unit in the history of football. Elsewhere, the defence conceded 59 points and nobody else could score on offense. They lost 59-0 (a league record losing margin) to the Pats. Buckle up, Tim, I think I hear your name being called.

Quotefest: Snake

2009-11-03T20:35:00.003Z

"Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."

From the never ending dickhead parade that is Comment Is Free, which is the main bulk of my lunchtime reading. I think it's pretty good except I don't think the tree is supposed to be especially magical.

Religion, eh?

Losing your voice

2009-10-21T14:18:00.005+01:00

I've lost my voice. And not the one I talk with either. Le sigh. Four things:

1. C'mere, what's so bad about playing France at football? They haven't been any good since about 1998. That's over a millennium ago (possibly). And we can put Richard Dunne man-marking Terry Henry, and that'll be that for him, unless he takes a free kick before the whistle or convinces the ref to overturn a penalty decision or one of his other Arsenal tricks. And if history has taught us only one thing, it is that Frenchmen headbutt right-backs, probably while wearing a manteau, eating an onion and driving a Peugeot. Ireland's right-back? John "Dear God, make him stop" O'Shea. That's win-win. If you want to crown them, then that's your business, but one question: France are so great, then why didn't they win their group?

2. It's breast cancer "awareness" month in America, and to, er, celebrate the NFL has this pink accessory thing going on. Some players are wearing pink boots, gloves, sweatbands, Denver played a whole game dressed like homosexuals (probably unrelated); coaches are wearing pink-peaked caps and pink ribbons. For every touchdown scored, John Madden promises to show some nip. But, and bear with me here, why? Surely everyone is aware of breast cancer? Aren't they? It's easily the most vaunted of the cancers. The Brett Favre of cancers as Madden would say. Call me old fashioned but I think cancer research should not be segregated. If the NFL goes pink, I call upon the LFL to force its players to have a set of fake testicles dangling from their shorts. Not necessarily for cancer, but I guess that would be a bonus if it were.

3. Did anyone actually watch The Byrne Ultimatum, formerly of RTE 2? I ask because it'll surely never be seen or heard of again. I read a piece on Cheryl Cole the other day, entitled: "Cheryl Enjoys A Night In With The Telly!" (Someone, call Pulitzer, I've found the new Woodward and Bernstein). In it she revealed that she likes both Eastenders and Corrie. Wow, my life is now complete. Anyway, I decided to embark upon a nightmarish blog-related journey into watching actual telly, to see what the celebrity fuss was. I started at 7pm with Nationwide, and was fine through Leirgas (easily the best thing I saw), GAA 2009, The Apprentice Ireland (instead of saying "you're fired" Bill Cullen just hands the loser a Pot Noodle and says "get used to it"), but The Byrne Ultimatum just blew my mind clean off of my cerebordum. Nothing can prepare you, no medic could revive me.

Clearly an attempted rip-off of those fake BBC quizzes where the questions are just thinly veiled prompts to tell jokes, TBU is unspeakably awful. But don't turn it off, it's so bad as to be mesmerising.

At the start, you see, Jason Byrne picks two people out of the audience, one to sit beside him and keep score, the other to play jingles on a tiny If-You're-Into-It-era-Jemaine-Clement piano (actually the best thing about the show). But, you see, Byrne is only a made-up comedian. He's like one of those guys who hears what he thinks would be a really cool nickname for himself, like Skittles, Flatbaby or Sugar Cock, and then starts calling himself it whether anyone catches on or not. Basically he's a comedian in the same sense that a coyote can run on air for so long as he doesn't look down, i.e. not in real life. But he has his own show somehow, and you bought a ticket for it because you wouldn't know funny if someone ran up and wifflebatted you in the balls with it. Wait, what? Anyway, now you're up on stage, and you've to talk with Jason Byrne, who isn't funny either. Hilarity doesn't ensue.

It is a terrible way to start a show. There's a reason why everyone isn't a comedian, and this show is it. Byrne invites a foureyed geek onto stage and then neither of them can think of a single joke. Wow. But luckily for you, there's a series of guests, one of whom you've seen before. But he wasn't that funny, no, he was Adam Scott. Scott is an Aussie, and he's about as funny as a wooden leg. To demonstrate this, he removed his wooden leg and waved it around a bit. To my knowledge, he has done this every single time he's left his own home. It's his whole act. Scott said to Byrne that he and the guy dragged up on stage looked like a ventriloquist and dummy. And they did, in so far as any two people sitting beside one another do. What ensued went on forever.

On to the games. Oh dear. Byrne can't present, so he doesn't really try. To introduce the games he just starts talking until he has said all the words he knows and about 7 he just made up. Then the game begins. One was "Whose line is it anyway". This involved a washing line, upon which things relating to a famous person would be put. Try this: A cup, a sausage and two rashers paper-clipped together, and a doll's head? Lady Gaga! Of course!

Then to finish there was a game involving cards face-down on a board. Byrne said about 2,000 words about what everyone had to do, then just stood up and shouted "HIGHER OR LOWER?". He turned over the card to reveal... Ozzy Osbourne. "HIGHER OR LOWER THAN OZZY OSBOURNE?!" Silence. "As in the drug-takin'" he shout-added (shadded). Next was a picture of Kelly Osbourne. Was she higher or lower? Not important. Who was next? Edmund Ignatious Rice. Really. The other team had a bizarre version of the same game, involving guessing "higher or lower, hated wise". The first person was Enda Kenny, probably the most popular politician in Ireland at the moment. Eventually a picture of Sean Fitzpatrick (anyone?) was turned over, and Byrne humped it.

When the games ended, the idiot dragged out of the crowd couldn't add up the score, on account of his apparently severe mental retardation. This prompted one of the panellists to proposition Hector O'Heochagain to the effect that if Hector could add up the scores in Irish then Hector's team could win. What a cunning plan! Maybe the fluent Irish speaker can't add in Irish! Next time you have an argument with a French defeat them by requesting that they respond in French! Go all in, with tactics like that, you can't lose.

His team lost, as did everyone watching or anyone reading this.

4. Thanks for nothing, youtube. Internet videos are the most moving pictures on the web. Cough. Youtube still has all the cats, geeks, special needs comedians, totally fake self-sodomising Americans and miscellaneous awful videos set to the awful "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" you could ever wish to be sent a link to (or not), but that's not necessarily a good thing. Short pointless videos are only so good, but sometimes you want to see something proper mental. Like a meta-Kanye West quasi-music video directed by Sofia Coppola's ex-husband Spike Jonze from Three Kings.

Or a piece of animation that basically gives you the history of Africa in 8 minutes.

Yellow Cake from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

Or how about a short in which a... well, just see for yourself.

Fine, enough. Youtube me!

Accidental Denial of Own Human Rights part 1 (of 1)

2009-10-11T11:45:00.008+01:00

Unemployment: Jayzuz aren't you sick of it? There's only so many episodes of The Hairy Bikers a person can watch (2) and by Wednesday you've allowed yourself to get so upset at The Sunday Times putting a picture of a baby in a Munster Rugby shirt in Leinster's ERC Heineken Cup on the front page, in Sepfuckingtember, that you've written a strongly worded email to former director of RTE Pharrell Corcoran's eyebrows out of sheer simmering, drunken rage. But what do you do the rest of the week?

Recently I've been playing Final Fantasy VII. I know. This is the game that your pal and mine Gordon Agar had tattooed on his body (well, a logo representing it, the game takes ages). When I was about 10, possibly less, I got it for Christmas and immediately flung it over my shoulder in a non-competitive rage. I raged a lot, even as a child. Just ask GI Joe. Then when I got back to school I found out that my mortal enemy, and all round nice guy, James "Jimmy Shannon" Shanahan had got the same game, and suddenly we found a way to make competitive a game in which you spend an hour buying a dress for a blonde Manga pervert: by trying to finish it first.

Thusly I did verily skip through the story to a point where I got completely stuck and promptly gave up. Then after about a month I went back and tried again, but still couldn't do it. If you have patience (and if you're reading this I'm guessing you don't) and get stuck in a game, you should try that. Just walk away from it for a while and when you get back to it you'll somehow be better at it. I reckon your body and mind just needs a break from sitting in a huddled position in the dark trying to make out the image on a 12" screen from behind the cloak of stars and stress colours brought about by sleep-deprivation and Mario refusing to jump across a metre wide gap.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I got FFVII again about two weeks ago, and played through it pretty briskly (what else was I going to do, find a job?), all the time searching for the bit that I gave up at. And yesterday I found that bit. And yesterday I finished the game. I got to the second last boss and then gave up the first time. So if you ever have a lot of time on your hands and want to spend it slowly going insane, try FFVII, it took me over 10 years to finish. Was it worth it? No.

But one way of spending your time you should probably avoid is try to accidentally kill yourself. I know, I've tried. Bear with me. You see I've never done drugs... actually that's not strictly true, I've done loads of drugs, the kind that make your face round and your immune system fall off. So I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to do them too. Just not the kind of drugs people think of first. I just never thought it seemed like a good idea to buy synthetic German biochemical solutions from a man with a gun. And I know that there's supposedly always a positive to putting things in your body that somewhat outweighs the negative, like the dexamethasone I was on that makes your nose- and back-hair grow like nuts while also making your nuts grow like nuts. Anyway, booze never actually did anything, didn't make me loosen up, didn't give me hangover, didn't make me burp like Barney Gumbal. Why would I bother then, they're the best parts?

Now since taking hallucinogens would be a doubly bad idea (since my immune system fell off) I had to do literally moments of research to discover a better way of inducing a stupor. Online. That's where I found this. It sounded pretty neat. A little too neat. So I decided to do a little more research. Then remembered what I was looking for in the first place and tried it out.

In retrospect, taking advice from Cracked.com probably isn't the best idea I've ever had. Never ever do the Ganzfeld Procedure kids. It's the same deal you get at Guantanamo without the form-hugging orange overalls. When you deprive yourself of sensory stimulus strange things happen. After a while my head felt a bit weird, but I still didn't think anything was going to happen. Then everything goes all colouredy, and there's sort of WMP visualizer on random deal going on. Suddenly, you're in a bright room with Beth Maguire, and it feels and sounds like she's actually there. And that's not so bad. But then she'll go off and it goes black and you'll start hearing things. Voices, not all of them speaking English, and things appearing, not all of them English. Dogs. A harlequin baby. Several members of the FFVII cast. It's like a Ken Ishii video. All terrifying and all right there. And the thing is, you kind of get lost in it, and because it's so like dreaming that you try to convince yourself that you're, you know, dreaming so you can wake up enough to take the pingpong ball off of your eyes.

But you're stuck, you can't move. When I finally woke up, I had a large (small) bruise on my left knuckle from flailing in my Ganzfeld procedure. Now that I think about it, I do remember feeling all tired and sleepy, and the next thing I know I'm in some sort of dreamscape, and I didn't see a unicorn or a muttonchopped foureyes, or any of the accoutrements to the Ganzfeld scene depicted above. Maybe I should have breathed through my mouth. Maybe I just fell asleep. God I've been having some strange dreams lately, ever since Waltz With Bashir came and ruined my life. Zach Galifianakis was in one. I played league for the Rabittohs in another. Still, I don't think I'll be trying the Ganzfeld procedure again. It's probably easier to just take some LSD.

Useless

2009-09-06T02:22:00.002+01:00

The title refers to the Irish international soccer team. "Sucker team" more like, am I right? Well, no, because we are the suckers for having faith in the bastards. When I was at the Heinekin Cup final in Edinburgh, I expressed my doubts over the kicking prowess of Johnathan Sexton. A racist Scotsman in a tartan hat turned around and told me to have faith, before turning back around and shouting something about English bastards. Johnathan kicked the goal and I became a European champion at supporting Leinster. I've resolved to have faith in the teams I've attached my emotional carriage to the bandwagon of ever since once.

So, like an IDIOT I decided to watch the Ireland match even though I hate soccer and think I'm better than both John O'Shea and Kevin Kilbane, as well as Stephen Hunt and Darren Gibson, not to mention the other 6 (I'll admit that Shay Given is better, but I did keep a clean sheet against my dad one time in the garden). But I, you and most mammals are better than Aiden McGeady at football. Whales. Women. Titus Bramble. All better.

At least Il Trappo left him on the bench. But then he brought him off the bench and onto the pitch. So I did something I've been threatening to do for as many as 1 second after his substitution was announced: I catalogued every touch he made to see his effect on Ireland's performance. Here it is.

65 minutes: arrives on pitch in limo.
67: first touch, gets tackled, ball goes out for throw
68: ball thrown to him, loses possession.
69: heads ball straight up in air, loses possession
74: tries to pass the ball 3 metres, fails
79: inexplicably comes scorching into frame when three Irish defenders have a single, long-haired Cypriot cornered and boots the ball into row Q, giving away a corner
80: gets the ball from the clearance because he doesn't do defending, starts running with ball, poor control sees ball fly away from him, can't outpace balding defender, holds ball up in opposition box, ends up passing it back to John O'Shea (dear God) on the half-way line, who kicks the ball over Duff's head and out for a throw. That wasn't really his fault, but at the same time, it clearly was.
84: contribution to the goal: stood on the side of the pitch not involved in the move. His biggest contribution.
87: loses possession, out for throw.
87: loses possession.
89: loses possession, gives away free.
90: disappears as Ireland desperately mash traditional away-lead-suicide button.

I add that Eamonn Dunphy said he came on and immediately had a huge impact, which is hyperbole having an affair with lying. Eamonn then added that Aiden won the Brownlow Medal, knocked out both Mike Tyson and Shaquille O'Neal and did a better dive than Wayne "I'm an honest player"[dives] Rooney. And I didn't make any of this up, I diligently watched his contribution, which consisted of him kicking the ball to the other team before running away crying. He had a single, backwards pass to John O'Shea. Alarm bells are ringing, Willie. Seriously, myself and Rosanna Davidson could do way better than that. The performance in general was bad, but seriously, Aiden McGeady is an awful player, and looks like he's about to cry all the time. Maybe that's because Trappo looks like he'd snap his neck given half a cha- actually forget that.

Listen to me talk

2009-08-28T06:09:00.001+01:00

(I wrote this post at 6am after being up all night watching films, the day after being up all night in Stradbally playing poker and winning despite not knowing which hands are better than others. It's not terribly coherent, which is why I didn't publish it earlier. At the time I think I just clicked the "save now" button instead of "publish")

Crank isn't a very good movie. Let me tell you about Crank. At the end of the movie, 20 begunned Chinamen stand facing Jason Statham, and he doesn't see them. It's that kind of football. I didn't like it, but the directors made a sequel, even though Statham's character Chev Chelios dies at the end of the first one. His resurrection is never addressed. However, his erection is. Four times or so.

Anyway, enough about Crank. What do you think of Crank? The guys behind Crank have invented a new movie for you to watch, featuring Gerard Butler and Michael C. Hall from Six Feet Under. It looks like this, and I really want to see it. My favourite films are all directed by P. T. Anderson and Stanley Kubrick, but still. Did you see all that stuff blowing up? And that car flipping over with the tracer rounds zipping by, and everything's all like BLAMBLAM DUKKADUKKADUKKA? Did you? It looks so buff it could convert gays, or convert straights to homosexuality, whichever is macho-er. I'll be seeing it next week.

So c'mere, did you ever see the movie La Haine? Yes, it's French, but you can't blame it for that. I liked it. It's about a Jew, Arab and African walking around the volatile Parisian banlieues one riotous day. Then a riot breaks out. It must be said, the Kaiser Chiefs predicted it.

It's very good. It's one of those films where nothing seems to be happening, but if you listen to stuff and read the subtitles or something you'll learn about things or whatever and Vinz finds a gun and he's all like "fuck the police" and yaddayadda. It's about drugs.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Read the subtitles, and you'll get into this story a lot deeper. The subs were Americanized, which meant they make ridiculous cultural assimilations, like switching all talk of Asterix the French comic Viking (he's in comics, he doesn't tell jokes) to talk of Snoopy. Then a character named Asterix comes along and guess what, America? They keep calling him Snoopy in the subs, even though we hear them say Asterix about 11teen times. Who can I call to arrange a riot over that? Can you arrange a riot?

Anyway, it's really cool, and it's French and monochrome so even though you'll enjoy it guaranteed (this is not a guarantee), you can say you're now into arthouse film. This is because in the popular consciousness, foreign language films are all arthouse, even though that's insane. La Haine is basically Boyz in the Hood, only better and about the Jews and nobody uses the "n" wor- actually forget it.

WHAT IS GOING ON?

2009-08-26T15:01:00.007+01:00

A long time ago I was a student. It wasn't actually a long time ago, because I'm still technically a student right now. Towards the end there, I used to be in the library a lot, something they don't tell you when you sign up. On Saturdays and everything. I used to sit on the top floor, since this was the only place where the Spanish students didn't go to throw their little family reunions and there was a slightly lower chance of people eating Pot Noodle while talking at full volume either into their phone or into their cupped hand. Since humans are creatures of habit, I used to see the same people there all the time; the African man who used to never wear deodorant, the only scene girl in DCU, the geek who followed the only scene girl in DCU around all the time, the most nervous man in Europe, etc.

There was also a ginger girl. Only she was different. She used not be only in the library, she used to be only everywhere. I'd go to the library on a Saturday, there she'd be. I'd go to the canteen, she'd be there. I'd get up at 12pm and walk through the Hub at 1, she'd be in the Hub having lunch there. I'd go into the Spar, and I never go into the Spar, magically she'd follow. Then I actually finished my exams, so I thought, no more Ginger. But then I was coming home from the pub after watching Barcelona steal candy from the baby that was Manchester United, the day after the exams, and there she was again, looking at me with her huge green eyes, that seemed to say, "I'm stalking the shit out of you". She also looked exactly like a young, green-eyed Jayma Mays, from the tapestry of injustice that is Epic Movie.

The thing is that I assumed that I'd been seeing her everywhere by accident or something, and that she probably thought I was following her around, because that's what guys do isn't it? I, therefore, seemed to be accidentally stalking her, and the more I tried to avoid her, the more I saw of her. I tried sitting in a different part of the library, only for it to be the area where the books for her course (*cough* biochem *cough*) were located. I tried going to the library at unusual times, but she must have lived on campus because she'd walk to Hampstead behind me about 3 times per week at closing time. Then one day I was sitting at the window overlooking the revolving doors. I was leaving to talk to someone when I saw her right there sitting adjacent to me. When I came back, in my TweetDeck window someone ginger had typed "xxxx xx x".

But girls don't stalk people do they? It's this norm, and also because I'm so slow on the uptake that I make continental drift look like Usain Bolt, that it took me so long to realise that she was stalking me, and probably not that accidentally. This, as far as I can tell, is the 3rd time that's happened. Still I didn't see it coming.

Now, however, something strange is happening. Girls stalking men is the new black, after the brief period when red was the new black and then black was the new red. There's not one but three movies about women stalking guys coming out. Beyonce's husband gets stalked in one of them, but by a woman, in a PG-13 movie, where nothing really happens. This one with Sandra Bullock looks utterly insane, as if it was filtered through the lens of a mental patient during break-time at Lunatic Camp. It even implies that her autism-spectrum disorder and aggressive sociopathic disregard for Bradley Cooper's lack of interest makes her "unique and different", rather than scary and certifiable, presumably the first thing that comes to mind to any men watching. The trailer blows the ending by showing them get together, which is a bad omen ripe for misinterpretation from delusional and dangerously impressionable young women. It's also bordering on sacrilege, as Sandra's character is clearly taking off the love of my life, Rita Leeds, but in a more hardcore, "full-retard" fashion not commensurate with the (lovely) source.

And now Lady Gaga comes out with a song featuring the line, "I'll follow you until you love me"? Wha-? What's going on? Is Lady Gaga going to be rummaging through my bins and hiding her penis in the bushes outside my house? Is that what time it is? Someone call John Hinckley Jr, all is forgiven.

Actually, there's one for you. Hinckley became obsessed with Jodie Foster, for some reason. Foster was a closeted lesbian for years and years, but any of her on-screen partnerships were a luminescent indication. She always came across as a frigid ice-queen. Mmm ice-cream. Hinckley didn't seem to care, and tried to stalk her in a more romantically insane way. He slipped notes and poetry under her door, and called her on the phone. When that didn't work, he considered killing himself in front of her to get her attention, because nobody ignores a corpse. Even he was sane enough to notice the flaw in that plan, so instead he attempted to murder both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan over a period of over 5 years. What I'm suggesting is that simply being where I am all the time and typing nonsense on my twitter feed isn't going to cut it. I mean, my tweets are all barely English as it is. Note to female stalkers: must try harder.

Crimes Against Cinema... Inglorious Basterds

2009-08-23T22:44:00.004+01:00

I never liked Tarantino. Pulp Fiction has a few good bits. And that's it. His entire canonisation revolves around the fact that his films are violent, which critics tend to hate, while simultaneously being rip-offs of other, better films made from 1930-1974, which critics love. When Reservoir Dogs came out, it actually made a big storm of controversy, but I can't recall anyone talking about it since in terms of its plot, direction, writing or performances. All that matter is that scene where Tarantino talks about Like a Virgin being a song about big dicks and the one where a sloppily-rendered prosthetic wound is mounted onto a bloke's ear. Pulp Fiction made noise. But then he made Jackie Brown, and people said, "OK, well we'll allow him an off day." Then he made Kill Bill: Vol 1. Then Vol. 2, one of the single most unwatchable films ever made. I haven't seen Death Proof, but I know it's shite. I just know.

But Inglorious Basterds would be a return to form, surely. And I can safely say that it is:

It's overwritten, under directed, and apparently totally unedited.
It's long. It's very long. It's literally 2 weeks long.
I actually wanted the Nazis to win. That's how bad it is.
Tarantino interrupts the film about 34 hours in to give you the lecture on Nazi cinema you didn't pay for.
Brad Pitt is in it, and Brad Pitt is a cunt.
Eli Roth is in it. OMG. Stop giving roles to your pals, Tarantino.

I read a review in the Sunday Times today and the King of the Dicks Cosmo "Not my real name" Landesman said that some people called it a return to form, while others thought it was insufferably boring, but that they were both wrong. What a prick. How can my opinion be wrong? I know when I'm bored. I thought it was one of the most uninteresting stories with some of the least interesting dialogue ever committed to film (which is saying something coming from the guy who watched all of Captain Corelli's Mandolin), and I was bored to sleep by parts of it because whole scenes were meaningless, the characters were bad, the story could by tied up in a 30 word synopsis but went on for $230, and I wanted to get my money back. It had the highest number of walk-outs I've ever seen, and I saw Southland Tales in the same cinema. It was boring, Cosmo, you don't need to pretend you're an intellectual and that conversations about Nazi actors is the reason you go to see a film where Eli Roth, the director of Hostel no less, kills Hitler in the end.

I love... A Pint Of Milk

2009-08-13T14:46:00.005+01:00

Most publications have a signature way of gleaming seemingly innocuous personal information from contributing guests. In the Sunday Times, it's A Life in The Day, a seemingly acceptable syntax error. In The Sun, they get a woman to take her top off. In Empire Magazine, they have A Pint Of Milk, a quiz that asks the question: How much is a pint of milk?

This is a seemingly innocuous question, but of course it isn't. When you earn 11ty trillion dollars sterling every time you blink on camera, you're likely to lose contact with all semblance of the real world. For another example closer to home, think of the British MPs, who thought nothing of having the British tax payer fork out £250 on a pen. But when you live in an ivory tower, money is no object, especially when it's not yours. I mean, Mariah Carey bathes in bottled mineral water and has an assistant whose job it is to tell her how hot she is every day, a job that's becoming increasingly difficult.

But back here on planet earth, where we pay for other people's expenses, drink tap water and get told how fuckin ugly we are daily (or is that just you?), we should probably know how much a pint of milk is. Should.

What's your earliest memory?
I don't know, I can't think back terribly far. Sometimes I see tweets from earlier that day I can't remember what I was getting at. My earliest memory from today was waking up and thinking, "why do I keep dreaming about Ashley Tisdale?". Did you know the Freudian concept of dreams being unconscious desires has been discredited? So that means there's some other reason why Ashley keeps washing what appears to be my car, with Sophie O'Connor.

How much is a pint of milk?
Super Milk (I need my vitamin R or I'm no good to anyone) is €1.44 for a litre. But a pint? According to the internet, a pint is the size of o.473176473 litres. So, let me get my calculator out here, a pint is... €136? That's not right is it? Dear god, that's a lot. Don't think I'll be buying too many of those, the litre is much better value. You ever wonder what the first guy who drank cow's milk was thinking? It's lucky he did it before the days of public obscenity laws. I mean, if you decided to have a sup of the cat, nobody'd come to your next Birthday party. Because it would be in a jail.

What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?
That burger I had last night was awful. The worst thing ever was deep-fried rashers. That or fish and eggs, I can still see that on the fork. Deep-fried rashers was a bad idea from the start. Actually it was really the sausage meat that nearly killed me back in 2005. When your lunch puts you in hospital it puts drisheen in perspective.

What kind of dog was it?
Oh, right. This question asked because I copied the questions from Danny McBride's Pint Of Milk last month. The worst thing he ever ate was a golden retriever.

Have you ever been in a real fight?
Yes. One day I was sitting in a bar when I noticed a large crowd marching outside. A procession had begun behind local stuntman, Rod Kimble, who was on his way to jump over 15 school buses to earn money for his step-father Frank's conveniently priced ($50,000) surgery. I went and joined. There was determination in the air. A Chinaman, white woman, and black man were singing "You're the Voice". It was super-positive. Then a guy threw a bin through a window and all hell broke loose.

What's the best piece of gossip you've ever heard about yourself?
That I fancied Laura Dowling. We've all seen a movie, or a tv show or read a book, or seen a cloud formation depicting the ancient tale of a boy and a girl who meet, instantly hate one another only to later reveal that their initial, instinctive dislike for one another was masking explosive sexual chemistry between the two. Well, I knew Laura from primary school and hated her stupid face and her stupid everything else too. I used to see her around all the time, because I played football and was vaguely popular at the time, and only spoke to her in response to her being a big, smelly jerk. Then around 15 or so I was in the cesspit that is Pedigree Corner (a boy lad!, Scale sham, a-ohs, etc.), sitting on a broken couch when she actually climbed on top of me, like something out of a bad tv show. I was amazed, as if in real life someone would confuse hatred for sexual attraction. I made her get off and spat the harsh truth like arrows of hot fire. It's also the only time that I know of when I actually made someone cry. But if you like someone you should probably do better than being a caustic, antagonistic, ignorant bitch before trying to rape them.

On a scale of 1 - 10, how hairy is your arse?
It's fairly hairy. Mostly in the crack really, the cheeks aren't too bad. But you've given me a woolly descriptor so I don't know if 1 is the highest or the lowest, so I'm going to give it a solid "kind of hairy, it's not that hairy".

Have you seen a celebrity sex tape?
I've seen a Lindsay Lohan one. It wasn't Lindsay Lohan in the video, it was just called that because yer wan had ginger hair. Still, to my mind, it counts as Lindsay's second best performance.

When were you last naked outdoors?
I don't think I've ever been naked outdoors. Do you ever wonder if dogs get self-conscious about being nude all the time? Probably not, they're all too busy smelling arse.

What's the worst smell in the world?
Fish and eggs and a dog's arse.

What would you choose for your last meal?
I don't know. But did you know that lobster is the most commonly requested final meal for death row inmates in American prisons? The interesting point is that (HISTORY ALERT!) lobsters are basically the spiders of the sea, and were originally not fished, but came up clamped to the fishermen's nets. Since most of them died, the fishermen tried to sell them, but they were seen as detritus, rather than actual food, so they largely went cheaply as fodder. One major use was as prison chow, and poor families would bury lobster shells because putting them in your rubbish left them open to discovery. So in a time when people apparently dug through the garbage of strangers, eating lobster was deemed socially-unacceptable. Then somebody saw a Frenchman eating one and thus Las Vegas was built on €6 lobster baize. For my last meal I'd like to think of a clever escape plan. Like, I'd ask for a gun, the key to my cell and a long length of rope, in club sauce.

Everyone: Happy 100th post Cormac!

Cormac: Aw, thanks everyone.

Damn, I missed the Jewish Olympics

2009-07-30T22:37:00.006+01:00

Taken verbatim from Daily L'chaim, 30/7/2009

Singing "Shalom Aleichem," the group of Maccabiah athletes ushered in Shabbat together in a brightly lit hotel dining hall, their Hungarian, Spanish, Finnish and British accents momentarily melting into a unified chorus of Hebrew. Leading them was an energetic young rabbi who has come to provide spiritual context to their first Shabbat together in Israel ahead of their participation in the Maccabiah Games, the so-called Jewish Olympics or "Jewlympics".

The Jewlympics, an event intended to neither compete with nor infringe upon the copyright of the legitimate Olympics, began in 1932, when Fyvish Finkle and Yitzchak ben Avraham noticed that no Jewish atheletes were capable of contending in the actual Olympics. Rather than wait for the Jewish Tiger Woods or Mark Spitz to open the eyes of a people to the joy of sport, they just went and did their own thing.

"Hugely satisfying, it is", Lenny Krayzelburg proclaimed after coming home second in the Jewish Sprint, where Azhkanazis inspect kosher diamonds for 100m. The event was won by Venezian favourite Shylock. Of his victory he gushed, ""Why, there, there, there, there! A diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfurt! The curse never fell upon our nation till now, I never felt it till now. Two thousand ducats in that and other precious, precious, jewels! I would my daughter were dead at my foot and the jewels in her ear." Congratulations Shylock!

Other events include Menorah Throwing, Sideburn Growing, the Mechitza-chase and the increasingly popular Kosher Salt Identification. Kosher salt is almost identical to regular table salt but has a much larger grain size and more open granular structure.

The big draw is on Wednesday, when dual-code hero Shylock takes on Silvio Berlusconi in Kosher Tennis. Kosher tennis is almost identical to regular tennis but uses a much larger racket with a more open granular structure. Shylock will be hoping to reclaim the crown he lost last Jewlympics. He is certainly up for the challenge. In today's press conference he stunned the assembly by warning, "If a Prime Minister wrong a loan shark, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.".

Earlier, he made it through a difficult match with Kyle Broflovski thanks to petulant John McEnroe style umpire heckling, screaming at various points "I stand for judgment", "I crave the law" and "O Noble judge!" when upset at baseline calls.

Event organiser Kashrut Mohel was pleased with the smooth running of the event. "Just like Hanukkah it is! Gentiles have Christmas, we have Hanukkah. We have the Jewlympics, everyone else has the regular Olympics. Which is better: presents and the best athletes in the world competing on the global stage or latkes and non-factor competition in Israel segregating athetics by religious belief?", he asked. "Ani yodea".

Who'd win in a fight?

2009-07-12T21:35:00.016+01:00

When you're a child, people ask you what you want to be. A lot of boys say they want to be professional futbol players. Fat boys say police man or solicitor, or something like that, so they can inflict indignant retribution against projected self-hatred on others. Girls, well I don't know, probably all want to be... priests. Or... submarine engineers. Does anyone ever say bathroom attendant? Do children in certain countries say they want to spend years becoming doctors so they can move somewhere else and become a kitchen porter?

I wouldn't mind being a kitchen porter actually. Anyone ever see the movie Hallam Foe (absurdly retitled Mr. Foe in America)? Hallam becomes a kitchen porter and proceeds to engage in my two favourite activities: plate smashing and stalking. And another thing: it counts as a job. I haven't got one of those, so it's an automatic step up. I have literally zero interest in living at home and obtaining 150 grain tokens per week for it. Balls to that. What is this? 1983? Yesterday? The thing is, days all meld together when you hate your life and want to die.

I say this because I have no idea of what I'm doing, or going to do, or of any of the things I need to have at least tried to consolidate by this stage. I'm nearly finished my miserable thesis, which is supposed to be the best thing I've ever written, but I wouldn't wipe my feckin hole with. Anyway, the best thing I've ever written is probably this, but if I hand that in I won't earn my master of science degree, a piece of paper that will hopefully provide at least 2 minutes of warmth when I'm reduced to burning it beneath a railway bridge in a desperate plea to stave off imminent death.

In this job market, you're fucked. Fucked. Proper fucked. People, I can't stress this enough, it's all your fault. YOU! You bastard. You thought that taking a loan you could never repay was a good idea. The banks didn't make you take the money, greed did. You couldn't afford a fucking €500 handbag (handbag, I ask you. You ruined my life for a handbad), so you got a credit card and bought it anyway. Then you paid off that credit card with another one. So many people deserve to get kicked out of their homes, deserve to have all their stupid shit repossessed. You greedy bastards.

So here I am, sitting here, shirt-less, because I had to sell the shirt off my back to afford a slightly larger shirt that's in the wash, wondering, depressed and lonely, what the jayzusin hell I'm going to do. And I just do not know. The problem is that even now, I keep thinking of films that remind me of how I feel now, like this, this, this and this. That's a problem because I actually think in terms of fictional stories and people, where in most instances, particularly in the last one, everyone wins in the end. And when you are sustained on a diet of unrequited hope like I am, the disappointment hurts that little bit more.

But what did I actually do with my life so far? I tried to learn a nonsense language, got sick, lost hope, then discovered I want nothing to do with business management. Should I be proud of the fact that my career development engineer told me that I'm too nice to succeed? I nearly smashed a bottle over her head when she said that.

Anyway, as far as I can see, I have no options. But out of that comes the "perfect soldier" condition. The perfect soldier has nothing to lose, so he doesn't care if he dies (note the distinction between "perfect" and "two-tours"). As far as I see it, I might as well try and be the person I've always wanted to be. I don't want to work 9-5, I reject that. What a waste of an animal's life that is. The vegetarians are wrong (again): animals aren't people too, people are animals too. So spending 40 years of your life in a miserable slog is an abomination against nature. Living to 40 is an abomination. If that's what mankind's self-awareness gives us, then that guy in Rashomon is right: we're already in hell.

So there's two things that I've always wanted to do. Now is the time to investigate how to go about actually achieving at least one of them, while I still have the inclination to want to maybe try. The first is obvious: rollercoaster tester. I need to try and find somewhere that doesn't need experience, because I don't think I've ever been on one. And that's probably the kind of thing you'd remember, unless you were off your head. Still, I'd like to do that, because I'd imagine the death rate is probably pretty high, particulary in China, and as I mentioned earlier, I hate my life and want to die.

The other thing is open my own restaurant. It wouldn't really be that much of a restaurant, in the conventional sense, but it would circumvent all the shit that restaurants do to rip off the common man, whom I enjoy leering down upon from my moral high-ground. First of all, the food would be served through a tiny slot in the wall by an elderly black man.

The food would only be the finest nouvelle cuisine from the 1980s, covered in the gluttonous pigsty decadence of East Texas.

When you've finished, you have to scrape what you haven't eaten into the bin, like in a fast-food restaurant. That way, I won't have to employ waiting staff. When the bin is full, the next person to try and put something in it has to take it out to the rubbish collection point. I will also personally fart in every single dinner. This way I can combine my sheer lack of business awareness with my being a total bastard.

And while I'm here, I might as well give it all up. My ideal woman: Rita Leeds.

Mental age of 7
Only usually gets hit on by little boys, whom I could probably take in a fight
Independently wealthy
Olympic silver medalist
She looks pretty good now, following extensive cosmetic surgery
Idiosyncratic dress sense

My ideal car: Maserati 6X Sport diesel

And my ideal home: A hollowed out Samuel Beckett novella

If anyone wants me, I'll be in the foetal position.

Mixed Matosis

2009-06-28T22:39:00.005+01:00

A while back, in a football match or something, a commentator or someone said something or nothing like "He cut through the defence like a cheap suit". In reality, "he" performed no such feat.

Mixing metaphors is relatively common in sports punditry. For example:

Ray Wilkin's day will come one night.
In the Scottish Cup you only get one crack at the cherry against Rangers or Celtic.
I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel.
The run of the ball is not in our court at the moment.
The lads have run their socks into the ground.
Butcher goes forward as Ipswich throw their last trump card into the fire.
Glenn is putting his head in the frying pan.
Our fans have been branded with the same brush.
I was feeling as sick as the proverbial donkey.
We could be putting the hammer in Luton’s coffin.

Now, while I can understand what they mean in each case, anyone with a fundamental grasp of anything, really, will know that only an utter moron would say something like carrot at the end of the tunnel. Stuart Pierce.

But the cheap suit one... works. Because cheap suits are rubbish aren't they? Well, cheap is a relative term and suits are only to be worn at weddings, funerals, funerings, bat mitzahs and the occassion of your first cool Coca-Cola of the summer. But having a cheap one is a no-no. It's as bad an idea as sticking your face in a fan or paying for recorded music.

So it's ok to rag on it a bit. As long as the connotations are negative, then Bob will dot your t-s.

Why don't you take a long walk off a cheap suit
A rolling stone gathers no cheap suits
Make like a cheap suit, and leave
You don't want to end up with a cheap suit on your face
His bark is worse than his cheap suit
All work and no play makes Jack a cheap suit
Out of the frying pan, into the cheap suit
Nice cheap suit, Hitler.
Hey cheapo? Suit up.

And so on.

And since I'm sure you're all wondering, the title is a crafty, though esoteric mixture between "mixed metaphor" and myxomatosis. Myxomatosis is a disease that affects rabbits, identified by growths (myxomata) on the skin, which can cause their ears to fall off. Once infected, the rabbit usually dies a few weeks later, which is about 12,000 centuries in rabbit years. They introduced it to Australia on purpose. Why? Fuck rabbits, that's why. They can't have their cheap suit and eat it.

I dislove... the Terminator franchise

2009-06-19T23:31:00.005+01:00

Mainstream entertainment; Jayzus aren't you sick of it? I don't intentionally dislike it, but I tend to. Because the mainstream can't surprise or inspire you. I mean, just think about The Shawshank Redemption for a minute. It's a universally loved film. But lets face it, it's a load of shit. A prison where everyone, with the exception of a mere 4 gays, is really sound. Where the guards are the real villains. It's a movie about accountancy for fuck's sake. Where the worst thing that can happen to a man in jail is having his library destroyed. And what about that bit where Morgan Freeman's character, Red, goes up to hang himself, then climbs back down only to be played by Eddie Murphy? Totally needless.

Anyway, I could go on (and I will). The problem with Shawshank is not only that it's shit, but that universal praise is universal. Shawshank became the go to movie for cineaste credibility. I've seen Bebo lists where perfect idiots have listed their favourite movies as "Saw IV, Land of the Dead, Armageddeon, and The Shawshank Redemption". And yes, that does make it harder to like the film too.

At the same time, I haven't chosen to be different. I wish I did like at least some of the things other people like. Like Kanye West. But I don't like Kanye West. I like rugby league. It's not easy when nobody has even heard of your favourite films. I just can't help that I connect with frustrated manchild characters like Barry Egan in Punch Drunk Love. Did you know that my favourite scene in all of film is the one in When Harry Met Sally where Harry is telling Jess about how emotionally fragile he feels about his wife leaving him for another woman, only they're at a baseball game and there's a Mexican Wave going around, so even though he looks like he's going to cry, every few minutes he has to stand up and go "WHHHEEEEY!"? Well it is. Well, that scene and the Love Stinks bit in The Wedding Singer.

Last week I took 2 hours off from my crippling emotional disposition to see Terminator 4. Now, the Terminator franchise is widely loved. I couldn't tell you why though because they're all rubbish. It just makes literally zero sense to me. Robots can't even walk without falling over. They can't kick penalties. They can't do jack shit, except build cars. They're not scary at all, unless you're the kind of person who starts screaming when you see a fridge. All machines do is break down and make you miserable. And how could one ever become intelligent? Most people aren't intelligent.

Anyway, the franchise is plauded for many things:

pioneering special effects
introducing a narrative that raises questions about physics, the nature of time and what it means to be human
having a strong female lead character

They're fair enough. Only they're not, though. Most obvious is the fact that Linda Hamilton is a man.

The questions raised about time travel are just ridiculous. As displayed on this chart, the writers have about as little a clue as to the questions they've raised that they've tried phoning the creators of Lost for some answers. The fact is that time travel is a nice little narrative idea, but it's complete bollocks. A sentient artificial intelligence that finds out the name of the leader of the resistance and decides to send a robot back in time to kill him before he's even born? A-yeah. In reality the sentient one would take one look at itself and have a critical system failure.

So in light of the increasingly cringeworthy sequels, and the fact that Christian Bale is now ruining two franchises rather than just one, I say it's time to chin the bitch. And how you axe? I propose the most obvious solution to humainity's future woes, a solution so obvious, I add, that I feel, almost, embarrassed to reveal it: Go back in time and kill Genichi Taguchi.

Taguchi developed a method of improving the quality of manufactured goods statistically. To do so, he tested these goods under extreme, though likely, circumstances. For instance, a mobile phone isn't designed to be dropped on the floor, but it should survive if it is. So he'd drop it, a load of times on different surfaces of different metals and materials with different casings, and the best case for results were recorded. Thus manufacturing of consumer goods, such as futuristic robot hitmen, was revolutionised. So just go back and kill him until he dies from it, and Robert's your father's brother. Robot's'll be falling over and breaking all over the gaff. Either that or, like, EMP. Whichever really. The real threat to the future is the money I'm going to have to waste getting dragged to shit Terminator movies.

Quiet Dads: "It's like Mulder- The Truth Hurts"

2009-06-19T11:08:00.002+01:00

Cormac's busy doing his thesis.

Does anyone think Robert Patrick is a great actor?
He's great as the T-1000- a robot.
He's great as John Doggett- a former Marine and FBI agent in the X-Files.
He was great as Colonel Sumner in Stargate Atlantis.
He was great as Johnny Cash's Da in Walk The Line (The wrong kid died, etc.)

Here's one for you. Did Johnny Cash's father name two of his children Jack and J.R. knowing that J.R. would change his name to Johnny? That was a confusing move. Actually, maybe J.R. took the name Johnny as a tribute to Jack. Johnny Jack Joey Joe Joe Jr. Shabadu.

Cormac, check out the episode of The X-Files called John Doe. It's in the 9th season and it's about John Dogget (Robert Patrick) waking up in Mexico after someone has STOLEN HIS MEMORIES. There's no Thespomat/Acting Unit 0.8 in it, you'll be happy to hear. I didn't see any boom mics either, so that makes it better than the episode with Hal from Malcolm in the Middle I had previously recommended.

The Birds & The Bees

2009-06-09T21:33:00.009+01:00

When I was younger, I think maybe around 12 or so, I went with my father to Northern Ireland. We wanted to see the sights (The Giant's Causeway, the Walls of Derry), have the experience (of going to bed terrified for my life). Anyway, at one point, my dad turned to me as he drove his old MG and said, "when we get back your mother is probably going to ask if I told you about girls". This wouldn't be the kind of thing he'd typically offer, so I reckon that my mother told him to. Either way, I was mildly terrified. Then he said, "so if she asks, just say that I did." Ladies and gentlemen: My father. To this day I still don't believe in girls.

Anyway, there's plenty of common euphemisms. Bear with me. One is "you want to have your cake and eat it". What? Why would I have a cake if I wasn't going to eat it? Who am I supposed to be? Carrie Bradshaw? When I've eaten it I'll get another one, for cakes are plentiful. Another euphemism is "the birds and the bees". This is a euphemism for sex. Well, actually it's a euphemism for telling a child about sex. I don' think I'd like to be with someone who referred to actual sex as "the birds and the bees", because I feel her parent omitted a few things there.

But why the birds and the bees? Why not rabbits? Or humans? Humans and rabbits? I ask because I have literally zero idea of how birds or bees mate, and I'm pretty sure that both species are not involved in the processes of the other. Or are they? There's a lot of questions in this post.

Firstly, even the wikipedia page on birds doesn't know. So that means that bored jagoff poindexters can't even hazard a diluted guess as to how they go about it. Well luckily for me, I've read a book (just the one, mind you). It wasn't on birds though, so it's not really that helpful, I just thought I'd mention it.

Anyway, it turns out that birds mate by means of a "cloacal kiss". It's kind of like what all sex would be like if there were no men. I believe the human equivalent amounts to heterosexual scissoring. Why? BECAUSE BIRDS HAVE NO JUNK IN THEIR TRUNKS! So they just rub up against one another and hope that some of the goo got inside the other. Ultimately anyone telling this to a child would be:

unhelpful
very knowledgeable on the breeding habits of tetrapod vertebrates

Bees then. Bees are nuts, aren't they? I'm not a big fan of bees, ever since that one time a bumble bee flew into my room and landed on my hand when I was playing MDK on the Playstation and when I looked at it I got killed by a sentry bot. But how do they mate? Hold onto your cheap suits.

These blokes are bananas. What happens is that they pair off, usually in pre-arranged couples decided upon by their parents. They are not allowed to date for any reason other than to search for a marriage partner. Usually they are paired off and married between the age of 18-21, effectively ruining their entire lives. But that's not all. Due to concerns over modesty, bees are not allowed to touch. So what they do is get a sheet and cut a hole in it. The male bee puts this sheet over himself and puts his- wait that's hasidic Jews. It's hasidic Jews and it's factually incorrect also. I'm always getting those mixed up. Fuck I just got stung by a hasi-

Well you get the idea. How bees actually mate is far less interesting, it simply involves a can of petrol, some superglue, an old Amboy Dukes bootleg cassette and the best 24 hours of your life.

Police Procedural

2009-06-06T12:48:00.003+01:00

The police procedural is pretty popular right now. I imagine that crime is so rife in LA because that's where most of these shows are produced, tying up most detectives in consultation roles. You hear them use nonsense vocabulary? That's genuine. The popularity, and therefore volume, of these types of shows stems from the fact that they are cosy, detached and admirable: the good guys always win (except in that one awesome CSI with the magician). The likes of CSI solve about 5 murders every 41 minutes. Las Vegas must have a murder rate of about 74 per 100 population year on year, which doesn't seem that sustainable, but has been sustained for about 10 seasons now. CSI: Miami seems to survive on a diet of exposed female flesh, while simultaneously acting all angry about the objectification of women. Rip-offs like Criminal Minds survive on gimmicks like the aforementioned show's gimmicky twist. The fact that you know there's a twist every episode surely leaves viewers looking moreso for the twist than the... whatever else it offers.

Anyway, writing a police procedural seems pretty easy. So here goes:

Death Solution

INT. LAP DANCING SCHOOL - NIGHT

ENTER two contrasting COPS, walking towards a CRIME SCENE. A HOT CHICK lifts the TAPE for the detectives to pass beneath. THE CAMERA PANS UP AND DOWN HER, for 7 MINUTES.

BEN, the TOUGH, STREET-WISE, TRENCH-coated one, SURVEYS the SCENE.

BEN

What am I looking at Mikey?

MIKEY, pronounced my-key (only quicker), is the clean-shaven one who goes to CHURCH every WEEKEND and can't allow himself to have FACE-TO-FACE SEX with his WIFE.

MIKEY

It's a crime scene, Ben.

A COP hands him a FILE.

MIKEY

One murder. Murder 1. Caucasian female, contusions on her latissimus dorsi, sub-cranial haematoma, and binary rectal asphyxiation. Ejaculate in the epidermis, peche melba in her main gauche.

We see the BODY of a young WOMAN. Her breathing is EDITED OUT. PAN to her PEACH-BASED DESSERT.

BEN

Damn. Why is it always the hot ones who die so dirtily?

MIKEY

I know, someone always rips the bra off.

CLOSE UP on her EXPOSED BREASTS. ANOTHER COP takes a PHOTOGRAPH of them.

BEN

Sick bastards. It's always about the sex, isn't it? You dirty bastards! It makes my blood boil, these dirty, sick bastards!

MIKEY pulls BEN off of COP, whom he had begun to WRESTLE with, OVERCOME with ANGER.

MIKEY

Easy Ben. I'd be right there with you, wrestling innocent bystanders, if only my God wasn't judging my every move. Alas, I can only express my anger in PG-strength forms of swearing and violence.

Then they STAND there for a PROLONGED period of TIME, looking AT the topless BODY. Eventually, BEN leans down and SNIFFS the body.

MIKEY

What is it boy, do you get the scent?

BEN considers THIS.

Then, suddenly,

BEN whisper-SHOUTS:

The murderer is... STEVE, the cop who gave you the file earlier!

WHIP PAN to STEVE, the COP with the FILE and the WRESTLING from EARLER.

MIKEY picks his JAW from the FLOOR.

MIKEY

Gosh-darn it all, how do you know?

BEN

Elementary. This corpse is... Steve's sister's girlfriend! He had to murder her, so he could... have his sister to... himself!

STEVE

I just wanted to cure her of her gayness!

MIKEY

Darn it all!

MIKEY gives STEVE a MILD shoe-ing.

BEN

But wait, Mikey, that's just the beginning of Steve's... perverse story. This corpse's girlfriend, and Steve's sister... is CHRISTINE, the hot chick who lifted the tape when we entered the lap dancing school.

WHIP PAN to CHRISTINE, the HOT CHICK who lifted the TAPE when they entered the SCENE.

MIKEY

Poop, Ben! How'd'you figure that?

BEN

It was quite obvious really: they have the same... birthmark on their shoulders!

STEVE is sitting shirtless on A chair. MIKEY RE-enters the room, with CHRISTINE in one hand, her POLICE SHIRT in the other.

CLOSE UP on a BIRTHMARK on CHRISTINE's shoulder, in the form of an ANCHOR.

CLOSE UP on STEVE's SHOuldER. There is a BIRTHMARK shaped like a HEART with "MUM" written in it.

MIKEY

Well what do you know...

He slaps STEVE medium-vigouously in the CHOPS.

BEN

But wait, Mikey, that's not all. Christine... isn't really Steve's sister at all! She is... YOUR sister Mikey!

MIKEY

What the frack?

MIKEY takes his TOP OFF. He has a BIRTHMARK shaped like and AN anchor on his SHOULER.

MIKEY

But-

BEN

That's not the end to this story, poindexter. See, Steve is, in fact... MY brother!

STEVE stops KICKING CHRISTINE, who lies PROSTRATE on the FLOOR. He is SURPRISED.

STEVE

What?

BEN takes his TOP off. Sure ENOUGH, he has a TATTOO of CHEWBACCA on his BICEP.

WHIP PAN to STEVE's CHEWBACCA TATTOO.

MIKEY

Chewie... Well I'll be a son of a monkey's uncle.

BEN

You sure will, partner, you daughter is hideous.

They all stand there with NO SHIRTS on. PAN ACCROSS them, SEVERAL TIMES.

BEN
In any case, this case is encased... in justice. Take her away boys.

The CORPSE is HAND-CUFFED and walked outside to the PADDY WAGON.

MIKEY

He's got a gun!

Suddenly ANOTHER COP, the photographer from EARLIER, runs UP and SHOOTS the CORPSE in the GULLIVER. She FALLS to THE ground, DEAD. All SURVEY the scene.

MIKEY

Shitballs, bitch had just one motherfuckin day to retirement.

They all LAUGH. MIKEY shrugs, then MAKES OUT with CHRISTINE. BEN and STEVE high- FIVE.

FREEZE FRAME

ROLL CREDITS

Mr. Burgundy, you have a massive election

2009-06-04T12:06:00.003+01:00

There's council and MEP elections happening tomorrow where I am. Some lucky Irishm'n are getting a by-election too.

My brother was trying to tell me that the local elections should be about local issues and political parties shouldn't have that much of an influence, but I tend to think that you can kick the government in the balls by voting against them in these elections.

Seriously, Fianna Fáil need to be thrown out, and I hope they return no MEPs and have no councillors after Friday. I also hope Sinn Féin don't gain any ground this time around.

Some might argue that it doens't really matter who votes for who on Friday. But if you feel that way, you can still show how angry you are at the Fianna Fáil-Green government by voting for the other parties or for Independents (but not for Sinn Féin)

Oh, and for British eyes only: Make sure the BNP make no advances and that NuLabour are out on their ear.

New apartment. Same building.

2009-06-02T22:48:00.004+01:00

So I had to move into my new apartment today. Because it's an apartment in college, I had to move out of my previous apartment, in college, and move about 20 horizontal metres to the left. This involved, however, going downstairs, past the obvious door to the new building, through the gym and into the hidden back door into the new building, up the stairs (the lift was brenk) and into the new apartment, which had a door that wouldn't open without a bit of enticement. And I made this trip 1 time? No, about 7 fucking times. And yes, today was the hottest day of the year so far. Literally 17 billion degrees Kelvin.

But you know what they say: new apartment... er, new apartment (?). I wish I had a bit more creativity and imagination. I mean, surely you've noticed that I've only ever had about 4 different blog posts, the rest being just lists of things, used because:

Everyone loves lists.
You avoid repetition.
They catch the eye.
They're easier.
They avoid repetition.
Everyone loves lists.

I've been enjoying the last few days. I've learned a lot about myself. Namely.

I'm really good at packing groceries.
I'll simply never be able to play the guitar, so I think the fair thing to do would be to burn down every existing guitarist in the country.
Strawberry water is better than regular water. Wait, that's got nothing to do with me.

The most significant thing that's happened since the last post is easily my discovery of an application (!!) for Facebook that facilitates the stalking of people you don't know! It's right there. And when I saw it I threw my head back and laughed. Then I stalked a whole bunch of people. There was nothing accidental about it this time.

What's on TV Now?

2009-05-17T17:23:00.004+01:00

God I'm bored. There hasn't been any football on TV for 15 minutes now. Do these people not realise that I need to watch all the football? And no, I don't mean the football, I mean the football. So I had a look at what's on later. May god have mercy on us all and all who dwell within us all.

I Bet that You Look Good on the Dancefloor: TV talent show, where judges exhibiting no talent critique performers who exhibit no talent in a futile, talentless vicious cycle of misery and depression. Ultimately the prettiest person in it wins, but it goes on for your whole life. Hosted by Chico and Gabriella Cheeky Girls.

Insult a Minger: Tranny and ugmo duo, Trinny and Ugmo, make a dumpy 40-year-old married woman, who has a husband and therefore no need to attract a mate, strip bollock naked before calling her names and questioning her very ability to exist in the world until she agrees to put on a moomoo and a hat that no self-respecting person would wear in an effort to make them leave. She later thanks them before setting fire to her own head.

Digging up the Past: TV News bastard Charlie Bird goes looking in the history books for the Irish High-king in his family closet, only to discover that his grandfather was a bigamous, slave trading crackhead who illegitimately fathered both Hitler and Oliver Cromwell. Charlie is so shocked he almost stops looking in the mirror.

Golf: Under New Management. Sports entertainment as the Manchester Wildcats take on the Sheffield Steel Bull Steelers Bulls, live from Luton Aquatic Center.

Film: Forgotten Baby: TV movie starring David Caruso and a young Megan Fox, who stands perfectly still in a cut-off halter-top and hot-pants for the entire duration. It's a bit like Home Alone, but focuses more on the 22-months imprisonment Macaulay Culkin's parents would have gotten for grossly negligent parenting.

Fly Me to The Moon: In an effort to show that British people are still all inherently racist idiots, unlikable TV arsehat Neil Morrissey is sent on holidays for free to Cape Canaveral, and ultimately the Moon on British tax payers money as that is the only place the BBC have yet to send someone. On the way he gets in a number of hilarious faux-pas which show how culturally insensitive he is, while flagrantly flaunting his sense of entitlement in the faces of the accommodating people accepting a bumbling motherfucker into their community. Subtitles on 888.

In the Spirit of Thievery

2009-05-15T18:24:00.003+01:00

I thought I'd rip off Saint Andrew's Net and offer my top picks in this weekend's sporting action. Enjoy, you bastards.

London Irish over Leicester Tigers: A week of Irishmen making tigers cycle around wearing hats begins tomorrow.
St. George over Canterbury: Because we've got Ben Creagh, in our team. We've got Ben Creagh in our team. And there's only two Brett Morrises, at least one of whom doesn't play for Canterbury.
Arsenal over Munchess Yanai'hed: You know why.
Donegal over Armagh: Isn't it about time Armagh weren't good at football for a while? Doesn't the cycle of success usually only last for 4 years? Goddammit.
Scarves over hats: I just can't abide hats. Or sunglasses. Scarves I can live with.

This is what happens when you're not looking

2009-05-12T22:21:00.006+01:00

Last weekend I was at home for three nights, sleeping my feckin head off. I sleep so much better there. That's because nobody buzzes my bedroom in Laois. There aren't any loud bitches coming home singing Mitchell Trio covers (where are security when this happens every night? Why are they only there when I so much as break wind with the window open, shouting at me like I'm Noisy McShouter?) Anyway, this is what I learned/did.

I watched tennis: I'll never understand tennis. It was, I believe, the late, great, French, pervert Serge Gainsbourgh who once said that "I don't play tennis because I'll never be as good as a wall". Ok, he never said that, but he was right. Walls are pretty amazing at tennis. Remember Big Blue? The chess playing computer who beat a Russian man? Well walls are like a much better Big Blue. In fact, they're like a much better Marat Safin. Anyway, I watched some over the weekend and I think I like it. That is all.
Megan Fox is bisexual: I read other people's blogs. Some of those people steal my blogs. Others simply have different agenda than I do. My agendum is simple: I want to warn the good people who read the internet not to set themselves on fire and cycle slowly towards a river. Anyway, on one of those blogs, I learned that Megan Fox is bisexual, and has some pretty unusual thoughts on men, which I'm sure her boyfriend, TV's Chad Corey Dylan, was surprised by. If you click the tag at the bottom there's about one thousand million other posts about Megan there. Tyler is of course the guy who said that he'd throw himself "down the stairs with a light bulb in [his] mouth to see Megan Fox naked". That said he isn't even the guy who's stalking her. That guy's blog was shut down. You know, because he was stalking her. It was a hilarious blog, because he wasn't pretending. There is a danger of this happening to me, over that girl who I see literally everywhere I go these days. I know DCU is small, but it's getting ridiculous. I better stop twittering about her long, ginger hair. *cough*
Haircuts: Never cheat on your barber. It's a sacred bond. It's a more important union than marriage. He knew. Somehow, he knew. I feel so dirty.
Arrested Development: Ko'ka-ko'ka-ko. Also, bleeped out swearing is funnier than when you just say ph-bleeep- in my s-bleeep-corn opinion. Also, The Encouragement of Steve Holt:
Don't ask "can I", ask "I can";
You can control your bladder when you're dead;
No blood, no oil;
There's no "i" in win!
Words: Agenda is always plural. The singular is agendum. You're welcome.

Leinster Rugby: I salute you

2009-05-02T22:49:00.005+01:00

There are many levels of degradation. Anyone who knows who Sasha Grey is could probably describe the lowest 5 or so (don't put her name into Google). I know a thing or two about degradation. I went to a Catholic school. I lived in Japan. And I believe it was the late, great Michael Cera, he of Paulie Bleeker and Superbad fame, once revealed, in his awesome online series Clarke and Michael, the lowest of the low: the action of resting one's balls on someone's chin and brushing their teeth with one's penis. That sentence had a lot of subclauses.

This is the action performed by Leinster Rugby today on those shite-hawking muckeen bastards from Munster. Years of cheating. Years of the most awful gloating in the world, delivered in a collection of the three worst accents in the whole world. A girl, from Blackrock, telling me in her D4 accent about Munster as I got the bus to DCU after coming out of a Leinster RDS match. They can all lie back and wait for the balls to drop.

I could give you a gloating blow by blow account, but that's what you're expecting, so you're not getting one. Instead you're getting a list of things:

David Wallace played all 80 minutes for Munster today. Anyone who can corroborate this should send me an email.
Ronan O' Gara: disrespect.
Forgiveness is a beautiful thing, even when you don't know what you did wrong.
Gordon D'Arcy is the best bisexual rugby player in the world. That I know of.
Look out for Cormac and Patrick Return to Edinburgh. This time with a camera so people won't doubt our stories about the Sugababes.

Well, that took an inordinate amount of time

2009-05-01T14:18:00.004+01:00

I'd like to thank Niall for providing so much content during April, to the Official Month Of Niallzer on Look-Out-Below, where he doubled his post count people. Doubled. Anyway, I'm back, so let the profanity begin.

I hate college. It's over now, in classic terms, by which I mean I don't have to go to class any more. That's a use for classic right? I've been writing non-stop on such amazing and interesting topics as management information systems, human resource management, and wife beaters anonymous with Chris Brown. That's right, people: fuck my life.

Anyway, here's a brief rundown of pretty much every interesting thing that happened to me over the last month. All 4 of them:

My will to live fell out the arse of the DCU library
I've come to realise that Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is the hardest game of all time. And it's on the DS, which PS3 owners would have you believe is only for girls, 12 year olds, 12-year-old girls and people who like games.
DCU is pretty small, so you tend to see the same people around all the time. I now realise that I see more of that weird guy with the nervous ticks than I do my actual friends.
Låt den Rätte Komma in is amazing, while I now realise how underrated the music of We Are Scientists is by people who don't have enough hair to form a floppy fringe. Also, dogs are more fun than girls. Dogs: a great bunch of lads.

So there you have it. If you want me, call me on Monday, I'll be committing suicide all weekend.

Jokefest

2009-04-07T00:29:00.000+01:00

How do you wake Lady Gaga up?

Poke her face.

What's wrong with you people?

2009-03-29T15:09:00.002+01:00

Anger. Rising within me like that awful curry I had last night. Brooding, pent-up anger. At you people with your shite.

I am, of course, talking about people who put "sleeping" or "snoozing" or "napping" in their Facebook profiles under Activities or Interests. Sleep is a necessary body function. Without it, you'd be about 3ft tall. Your scars would never heal. You'd be really really tired. Basically, you have to sleep, whether you like it or not, it isn't an activity, it's an absence of activity. It's certainly not an interest, unless you're a doctor or a scientist.

If that's an activity, then why have I never seen "having a piss" on anyone's profile? It's called "relieving yourself" for a reason. Because you feel relieved afterwards. An on a scale of 1 to I've had my fun, having a weewee is about an 8. And don't even get me talking about number 2s. Sometimes I eat beetroot just to see a red one.

Anyway, I've decided that I'm going to look at the profiles of all of my 129 Facebook friends and delete every one of ye who has sleeping down as an interest. Then I'm going to find you, and ask you "do you like apples?", wherever you're sleeping. Then I'm going to give you a karate chop, right to the head. How do you like them apples?

Curruculum Viritas

2009-03-26T16:25:00.003Z

I've not had to write a CV for a long time. Like, for example, I've never had to write a CV. Every job I've ever had has involved an application form or me standing outside a pub one morning before it opened and acting slightly more sober than the other people in the carpark. But now I have to do one for a fake interview for a made up job I don't even want. Welcome to DCU. So here it is, in full.

CORMAC BOLGER (M, 3/8/1986, 32-24-32)

Profile: Barely literate blogger with one leg that's longer than the other. Doesn't get up before 12pm unless Sam and Mark are on Children's BBC. Zero motivation, uses analytical skills to judge the distance Kratos can probably leap in God of War 2 on the Playstation. Once had a pet dog, but he's dead now. Once hit a woman in the face with a rugby kicking tee. Good leader.

JOBS: Greenkeeper, 2001-2003: Once saved a man's life by rushing him to his father's helicopter. Should, in retrospect, have let him die. Forgot to turn off a hose one time and emptied an entire water tanker. Never could figure out how to use the thing that made the holes. Was asked not to come back.

Barman, 1999-2007: had bike stolen twice. Once got fired on Christmas day. Job consitsted largely of pouring drink down old farmers until they wrecked up the place, whereupon I'd be berated for pouring drink down them, despite that being exactly what I was told to do. Survived the advances of several mothers. Probably poured at least the second best pint in Killeshin.

Teller, AIB, 2004-2006: Clocked about a million hours due to the crazy bureaucracy of the administration. Had one of the women on my floor try to set me up with her ugly daughter. Once changed a tyre in the carpark for one of the bosses. Carried really heavy bags of coins and opened jars. Displayed letter opening skill. Once served a traveller and won.

EDUCATION: For some reason keep coming back to DCU, despite threats to burn it down. Miserable sod who wasted exactly 5 years of his life and wants every minute of that time back so he can waste it somewhere else and avoid awkwardly writing blog posts in the third-person.

Oh Facebook, when will you just die?

2009-03-21T00:33:00.005Z

I never bothered with Bebo. All of the pages looked the same, and it seems remarkably like something that a closeted Computer Applications student would do for a 3rd year project. Basically, what I mean by that is that I could do way better, if I felt like it, but I don't so you're stuck with it like it is.

Then it was on to Myspace. I quite liked myspace, because it was reasonably attractive in aesthetic terms. But then everyone on it became a Chinese spambot, who tried to get you to befriend them so they could post comments on your page about penis pills. And I'll tell these Chinamen exactly what I told Ann Deane: there's nothing wrong with my penis.

Now Facebook is really popular, in spite of my campaign of hatred against it, possibly numbed somewhat by the fact that I use it basically everyday. The thing is that Facebook keeps changing. In product terms, its in the mature stage, when even your mum has a profile, and the only remaining potential subscribers are poor Latinos and that Japanese guy in the Philipines who thinks its still World War II. In relationship terms, you're getting bored of Facebook, and it's getting trampy to try and keep you interested. It keeps trying different looks. And if the original was less than attractive and the first makeover only served to highlight its varicose veins, this latest revamp has had the effect of rolling over one night and realising that the social network you've been seeing actually has a penis.

It's ugly. I know that they know this too, because they didn't even announce that they were changing the page until after they did it. But here's what's really wrong with Facebook, in a handy list.

The applications are fucking GAY: I thought it was bad when people kept trying to bite me and make me a vampire. But now it's just getting out of hand. What kind of music are you? What kind of car are you? What kind of female shoe are you? I am none of these things, of any kind. For I am a person, just like just like Tom from Myspace and Soylent Green. What's next? What kind of nuclear disaster are you?

Who are these people: It's telling me about people I don't think I ever spoke to. I know I unwound some as friends over the time, but am I really that likely to ever need to contact Giulia Dallaglio again? I hope not. Is that my fault? No, it's Facebook's, for trying to get me to keep contact with people I never liked anyway.
If Hitler was alive, he'd use Facebook. Looks like he's already trying, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! Beware of ZOMBIE HITLER.

Facebook just isn't necessary: I have a phone, just ring me if you want me. If you don't have my number send me an email. Job done.
Even people on Facebook are trying to get it shut down: Seriously. I mean, like, for real. It's sort of ironic really. In the same way as I'm against protesting, I just don't know how to show it.

Historian's Fallacy

2009-03-18T12:36:00.002Z

I quite enjoy strategic management. I know it's not cool to say that. But I don't care. I like Michael Porter. I even like reading Competitve Advantage (sample sentence: If the logic underlying an S-shaped subsitition curve is believed to hold in a particular substitution process, as well as the assumption about a constant fractional rate of fractional substitution, the logistic function can be used to forecast the path of substitution that will occur(Porter, 1985:303-4)). But I had to do a strategic plan for the next 5 years of my life. It didn't take that long, because I'll probably be dead by then, but I had to describe what I want to do when I'm finished college. I don't know, because it takes some time to figure that out. So I did what any right thinking person would do: I looked to Charlie Brooker for help.

So, apparently I want to work in TV. I was not made aware of this. But please play along.

References:

Porter, Michael, 1985, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, Collier MacMillan Publishers, London

I Dislove... talent shows

2009-03-15T23:41:00.002Z

Talent shows. Jayzus aren't you just sick of them? There's an inherent flaw in those talent shows we all know and hate. America's Got Talent. Britain's Got Talent. The Southern Bangladeshi Region of Chittagong's Got A Little Less Talent Than Most, But Talent Nonetheless Exists In The Region Idol. And you know what the problem is? None of those titles has a question mark in it.

So now it's Ireland's turn, only, like, 5 years behind the rest of the world (even more if you live in Connacht). The All-Ireland Talent Show, presided over by the better looking Seoige, is just so awful I want to show my own special talent (blogging without using spelkcheck).

And guess what? The panel is made up of singers and music people. There are other fucking talents than singing or dancing or playing an instrument. In fact, my uncle Frank can do all three at the same time. Seriously, he does it at every family wedding. If a drunken male relative can do it, it's not a talent. It's £250 from You've Been Framed, but it's not a talent.

I want to see real talent. Maths. I can't do maths. Everyone can sing, just to different ability levels. But even the deaf can sing. Everyone can dance. I know a guy in a wheelchair who breakdances (in a wheelchair). And people have been playing musical instruments better than you for 3,000 years. I never understood why every guitar player I've ever met has a special talent: an ability to both move their arm at the elbow and grossly overestimate their greatness. But I suppose nobody can clap along when you're doing Pythagoras's Theory.

So here's a list of talents that are vaguely amusing that I'd like to see on the next season of these shows:

farting the alphabet
farting the 6 times tables
having a big, old fart
and flatulence

To make these especially impressive, it'd have to be a woman since women don't fart

(and they don't sweat, they glow).

Uh oh! I'm unemployed!

2009-03-15T12:18:00.001Z

Thanks for the inside-joke riddled introduction, Cormac.
Has anyone got any songs that they think would be fun to play on the bass?

Never gonna give you up

2009-03-12T02:34:00.001Z

Oh, Niall, when will you blog? Come on, give it a little type-typey. A little type-a-roo

Lionel Rich-Tea

2009-03-09T21:33:00.005Z

Niall(zer_uh_huh) talked himself into an impromptu invitation to write for Look out Below (Oh, fuck dude), and to be honest, I thought he'd have written something by now. I know it was only on Sunday around roast potato'clock that he joined, but, sure, what else'd he be doing? Scratching his undercarriage? This is a man whose idea of classy is drinking rosé wine from a carton out of a dirty pint glass after all.

So to get him going, I've generated a short list of topics to begin with. Of course, the regulars such as I Love... and Is it Wrong That I Fancy... might need some clarification as to whom "I" refers to from now on, but I'm sure Niall can come up with some regulars of his own, such as... Well, you know.

I Love... dope-ass sneaks (or something)
Nice place to stand... dickheads.
What are they going to say, "Sumimasen?"
I can hold a piece of paper erect using only my huge chin. What have you ever done?
Glue trousers
Translation: a wet thing
I wish you continued success: the death of Al Pacino in Righteous Kill
Is it Wrong That I Fancy... John C Reilly

These are largely just titles that summarise Niall, in the mind a blogger, one so classy that he always looks around before picking the fluff out of his belly button in the canteen at lunch.

I dislove... Australian sportspeople

2009-03-08T18:35:00.003Z

As an avid sports fan, a man who once watched a Carlow County hurling match, I have dabbled in Australian sports. I do admire their dedication to sports, a national constitution that develops young talent, which has resulted in a great number of sporting heros despite having a population of only 8 million people, which is the less than the amount on your average Martin Johnson English rugby panel.

But what the fuck Australia, what the fuck?

Ben Cousins. Ben won the Aussie Rules player of the year award a whopping 13 years in a row. Then he turned professional. However, at the same time, he was taking big prostitute loads of cocaine. He drank at least Andy Fordham's weight in beer every day. It's possible that he played some of his best games following the snorting of every pharmaceutical from aspirin to Lotrimin Ultra athlete's foot cream. He was eventually found out and then he was banished from playing in the AFL, as were his children, his children's children (Ben's grandchildren), and also their children. For nine months. Now he's playing for the doggies (I think). The most ironic thing is that he won the Best and Fairest award 2 times, largely while being more drunk (relatively) than the other players.

Shane Warne. He's the only cricketer anyone can name, apart from Mary Harney, which is a pretty big achievement alone. But when you factor in that he refuses to get out of bed for less than a cocaine load of prostitutes, the fact that he ever got around to hitting the crease is itself a noteworthy achievement.

Mark Bosnich. I think he did drugs too, and of course committed the cardinal sin (he played for Manchester United, on two non-consecutive occasions). I think after getting the sack for snorting cocaine (seeing a pattern?) off the naked breast of Chelsea sub-goalkeeper Lenny Pidgely, he's playing for somebody in Oz now, despite being about 63.

Mark Gaznier. Gaz was my hero. He was the man I aspired to be. The best all-round rugby league player this side of Andrew Johns (an Aussie who of course got caught in Heathrow with an E tab and instead of just pretending that he was still adapting to life after pro-sports, he admitted that he'd been doing it since he was in his back garden kicking 40/20s with his little sister), and the best centre in the world, naturally, being an Aussie, was off his rocker too. He nearly got the sack in 2004 for sending pictures of his erect, naked penis to the wife of one of the other Dragons. Then he went and committed the other cardinal sin, thou shalt not convert to union until you've won St.George a Premiership.

There's a load more. I mean, there's literally 5million more. But none of them ever really mattered. Sure, I was shocked and amazed when Gaz left and Barry Hall got tired of just punching people on the AFL oval and went to become a boxer instead. But now...

Brett Stewart.

I play fantasy NRL with Yahoo.com.au. Last year I missed the first 6 rounds of the season, and still managed to get my team to the top 200 of the entire world league. If I had averaged 40 points in the other 6 games, I would have won the league by nearly 100 points. My average for the games I did have a team for was 54. A large part of this was Luke Covell, the slowest winger in league, scoring about 3 million points for the Sharks. But the real reason was Brett Stewart. So the first name on my team sheet this year was Brett Stewart. And what did Brett Stewart do? He got so drunk that even Aussie pubs wouldn't serve him, then he sexually assaulted a 17 year old girl.

I'm the real victim here. I had a real chance of winning the Yahoo.com.au fantasy NRL. But no, Brett Stewart has to go and drink loads of free beer than go chasing Aussie teens. Thanks, Australia.

So, here, for you, the Australian sporting masses, is a handy list of what to do to stay on the straight and narrow:

Drink some beer: not all the beer, just some of it.
Know the law: despite the age of consent being 16 in Oz, you still need to actually acquire proof of her consent. "Get off me, ya flamin' galah" doesn't count.
Try performance enhancing drugs: Rule: cocaine doesn't make you any better at swimming, kicking a ball or running. Exception: race-car driver or Lleyton Hewitt.
It's not illegal if you don't get caught: If you walk around with a head on you like you've just slept in a ditch, with facial herpes dripping puss consisting entirely of freebased heroin, somebody'll probably notice, Mark Bosnich.

It can't be that hard to get away with drugs, really. Americans do it all the time, don't they Lance Armstrong? Just ask Barry Bond. And Christiano Ronaldo is seemingly embraced for his perversions. Just ask Max Mosely. Seriously, Australia, you want to buck your ideas up. Sharpish.