The first episode of the wonderful Charlie Brooker's Newswipe, in three parts:
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Deny
Good.
About bloody time shysters like this started getting prosecuted... but just how dumb are the people in charge in Iraq?
About bloody time shysters like this started getting prosecuted... but just how dumb are the people in charge in Iraq?
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Acrobat
So, since September...
Getting married - funny how some people reacted to how we did our wedding. More than one person carried an attitude that, because we didn't have the standard hotel reception, the marriage itself was somehow less worthy. Ah well, I suppose it was a bit much to expect everyone to get it.
Honeymoon - went to California - San Francisco, Russian River and Santa Barbara. Loved it. Absolutely loved it.
Stag in Munich - my stag was a week after my honeymoon. Oktoberfest is just mental. End of.
Thierry Henry - I'm not over it. Still. Though the FAI tried their damned best to make me forget about it through shame. Still, though, what a bastard.
Lisbon II - Good. Yes running it a second time was farcical. But the fact remains that the failure of Lisbon I was nothing to do with the content of the Treaty, it was as a result of the scaremongering of catholic fundamentalists, wannabe Trots and anti-everything attention seekers. They got beaten at their own game second time around.
Dundalk FC - Easily secured fifth place. Imagine what we could have achieved if we played football with 11 men.
Liverpool - What. The. Fuck.
Boring Munster - Just when I thought it was safe to leave the house they go and 'do a Boring Munster' against an injury plagued French side.
Climate Change - If I hear one more retard make a 'so much for your global warming' joke because it's been colder than normal for three weeks I'll probably smash them one.
Nordies - Paedos to the left, whores to the right. There they are, stuck in the middle of fools.
Gaelgóirí - Still writing their NIMBY whackjob letters to the papers.
The Budget - Kinda surprised they left Private Sector workers entirely alone, but I won't complain. NAMA is an utter joke, however. I love reading irisheconomy.ie.
Shares - I got greedy in November when I should have bailed out of MAN Group at £3.70 and bagged an 87% profit. Instead I held on til they went ex-dividend and they have since fallen back to £2.98. I sold out of my Eurostoxx, which have been flat since, and bought ENI and France Telecom with the proceeds. The former is slightly up, the latter is slightly down.
Music - Christ, there has been so little worth listening to. 2008 and 2009 were mostly awful for albums. The mainstream stuff seems to consist entirely of non-descript solo female artists while the Indie stuff just seems to be getting more and more experimental. I bought Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors because of their reviews and both are very inaccessible records. Friendly Fires, Passion Pit and Hockey are pretty much the only new bands from the last 18 months that I can get my head around. I was delighted, though, with RATM getting the Christmas No. 1. I still love that album. Even the best efforts of asshole journalists pulling the contrary 'let's read far too much into this for the sake of it' stunt didn't ruin the hilarity for me.
That'll do for now, I suppose.
Getting married - funny how some people reacted to how we did our wedding. More than one person carried an attitude that, because we didn't have the standard hotel reception, the marriage itself was somehow less worthy. Ah well, I suppose it was a bit much to expect everyone to get it.
Honeymoon - went to California - San Francisco, Russian River and Santa Barbara. Loved it. Absolutely loved it.
Stag in Munich - my stag was a week after my honeymoon. Oktoberfest is just mental. End of.
Thierry Henry - I'm not over it. Still. Though the FAI tried their damned best to make me forget about it through shame. Still, though, what a bastard.
Lisbon II - Good. Yes running it a second time was farcical. But the fact remains that the failure of Lisbon I was nothing to do with the content of the Treaty, it was as a result of the scaremongering of catholic fundamentalists, wannabe Trots and anti-everything attention seekers. They got beaten at their own game second time around.
Dundalk FC - Easily secured fifth place. Imagine what we could have achieved if we played football with 11 men.
Liverpool - What. The. Fuck.
Boring Munster - Just when I thought it was safe to leave the house they go and 'do a Boring Munster' against an injury plagued French side.
Climate Change - If I hear one more retard make a 'so much for your global warming' joke because it's been colder than normal for three weeks I'll probably smash them one.
Nordies - Paedos to the left, whores to the right. There they are, stuck in the middle of fools.
Gaelgóirí - Still writing their NIMBY whackjob letters to the papers.
The Budget - Kinda surprised they left Private Sector workers entirely alone, but I won't complain. NAMA is an utter joke, however. I love reading irisheconomy.ie.
Shares - I got greedy in November when I should have bailed out of MAN Group at £3.70 and bagged an 87% profit. Instead I held on til they went ex-dividend and they have since fallen back to £2.98. I sold out of my Eurostoxx, which have been flat since, and bought ENI and France Telecom with the proceeds. The former is slightly up, the latter is slightly down.
Music - Christ, there has been so little worth listening to. 2008 and 2009 were mostly awful for albums. The mainstream stuff seems to consist entirely of non-descript solo female artists while the Indie stuff just seems to be getting more and more experimental. I bought Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors because of their reviews and both are very inaccessible records. Friendly Fires, Passion Pit and Hockey are pretty much the only new bands from the last 18 months that I can get my head around. I was delighted, though, with RATM getting the Christmas No. 1. I still love that album. Even the best efforts of asshole journalists pulling the contrary 'let's read far too much into this for the sake of it' stunt didn't ruin the hilarity for me.
That'll do for now, I suppose.
A Sort Of Homecoming
So it has been a while!
Blogging is a habit and, post- my wedding, it was a habit I had fallen out of. I don't know if I'll get back into it properly. I think I'll stick to short posts, maybe, from now on.
I had two reasons for blogging, in hindsight. One, to get my amateur journalist pretensions down 'on paper' in the event that someone, somewhere would be interested in them and, two, so as I wouldn't make the mistake again of going into passionate rant mode on topics that interest me when talking to the people I encounter daily who couldn't care less about anything beyond their immediate bubbles.
I'm delighted I blogged for the last few years, because I have learned just how limited and limiting most discourse is. There are far too many people in this world who simply believe whatever it is they want to believe. There are far too many people in this world who cherry pick the information that reinforces their own prejudices and choose to ignore the mountain of information that should force any intelligent human being to rethink their position. Blogging has helped me to move beyond that, hopefully.
Blogging is a habit and, post- my wedding, it was a habit I had fallen out of. I don't know if I'll get back into it properly. I think I'll stick to short posts, maybe, from now on.
I had two reasons for blogging, in hindsight. One, to get my amateur journalist pretensions down 'on paper' in the event that someone, somewhere would be interested in them and, two, so as I wouldn't make the mistake again of going into passionate rant mode on topics that interest me when talking to the people I encounter daily who couldn't care less about anything beyond their immediate bubbles.
I'm delighted I blogged for the last few years, because I have learned just how limited and limiting most discourse is. There are far too many people in this world who simply believe whatever it is they want to believe. There are far too many people in this world who cherry pick the information that reinforces their own prejudices and choose to ignore the mountain of information that should force any intelligent human being to rethink their position. Blogging has helped me to move beyond that, hopefully.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Gone
All quiet on this front recently... because I'm about to get married! Woo hoo!!
Yep - I have been very busy in and out of work. I'm getting married on Friday then heading to California for a ten day honeymoon. So my ranting and raving will be on hold til the end of the month.
As I've said before I'm not a huge fan of traditional weddings, and neither is my wife to be, so we're trying to have as relaxed a day as possible yet keep the families happy. It's all a bit of both worlds, but it has kept the expense and stress levels down for all concerned and for that I'm grateful.
I did up my own invites, RSVP cards and CD cover for the wedding favour I'm doing, (a selection of the wedding music):
Yep - I have been very busy in and out of work. I'm getting married on Friday then heading to California for a ten day honeymoon. So my ranting and raving will be on hold til the end of the month.
As I've said before I'm not a huge fan of traditional weddings, and neither is my wife to be, so we're trying to have as relaxed a day as possible yet keep the families happy. It's all a bit of both worlds, but it has kept the expense and stress levels down for all concerned and for that I'm grateful.
I did up my own invites, RSVP cards and CD cover for the wedding favour I'm doing, (a selection of the wedding music):
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Sunday Bloody Sunday
It didn't occur to me that there'd be a way Northerners could make the Lockerbie bomber release about them and their own grubby little internecine nastiness. How naive of me.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Complete Control
A truism of life is that people are convinced that the world is becoming an ever more dangerous or violent place, that the generation coming after them values life less and has less respect for others.
In Ireland people think back to the 50s and 60s when the murder rate was non-existent and people, apparently, could leave their doors unlocked. That we now know children were being beaten and abused in their thousands by the religious orders seems to be by-the-by. Anyway the fact is those times were a blip in Irish history. Ireland had higher murder rates in the 1800s than it does today, for example.
I recently came across this:
"Now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler. In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth..."
Unsurprisingly he fingers modern media for scaring the crap out of us. Something I have raged about before. It's worth reading.
In Ireland people think back to the 50s and 60s when the murder rate was non-existent and people, apparently, could leave their doors unlocked. That we now know children were being beaten and abused in their thousands by the religious orders seems to be by-the-by. Anyway the fact is those times were a blip in Irish history. Ireland had higher murder rates in the 1800s than it does today, for example.
I recently came across this:
"Now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler. In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth..."
Unsurprisingly he fingers modern media for scaring the crap out of us. Something I have raged about before. It's worth reading.
Friday, August 14, 2009
A Sort Of Homecoming
As you may know I tried to catch a falling knife last year in that I bought a house for about 20 - 25% off its peak value, but an equivalent house in my estate is now down another 10% from that peak (raw figures of approx 390K, to 300K to 260K).
Out of curiosity I did a search in my general area to see how much prices were coming down. Amazingly one particular estate - Mount Oval in Rochestown - is seeing a savage collapse. Houses that routinely sold for 360K and more as low as 220K with 1-beds down below 200K.
One caught my eye because of the following, desperate, sales pitch:
"Last price reduction, this is a bargain not to be missed.The price is set for a quick sale and at this price, the gross cost before tax relief of a 92% mortgaqe of €207,000 over 35 years would be approximately €1,095.40 at a rate of 5.5% APR, allowing for tax relief for a couple, which is €232, the net cost before life assurance would be €863.40, which is about what you would pay to rent, the only difference is at the end of the day you would own the property."
Oh dear! A 35 year mortgage on a one-bed apartment is the same as renting it! That's a good thing!?!
In America, according to David McWilliams and some NY Times article I can't find right now, the long-term price of a house is equal to 14 times the annual rent the place can generate. If that was replicated for this example the apartment is, in fact, worth €145,000.
Or, to put it another way, bargain my hole.
Out of curiosity I did a search in my general area to see how much prices were coming down. Amazingly one particular estate - Mount Oval in Rochestown - is seeing a savage collapse. Houses that routinely sold for 360K and more as low as 220K with 1-beds down below 200K.
One caught my eye because of the following, desperate, sales pitch:
"Last price reduction, this is a bargain not to be missed.The price is set for a quick sale and at this price, the gross cost before tax relief of a 92% mortgaqe of €207,000 over 35 years would be approximately €1,095.40 at a rate of 5.5% APR, allowing for tax relief for a couple, which is €232, the net cost before life assurance would be €863.40, which is about what you would pay to rent, the only difference is at the end of the day you would own the property."
Oh dear! A 35 year mortgage on a one-bed apartment is the same as renting it! That's a good thing!?!
In America, according to David McWilliams and some NY Times article I can't find right now, the long-term price of a house is equal to 14 times the annual rent the place can generate. If that was replicated for this example the apartment is, in fact, worth €145,000.
Or, to put it another way, bargain my hole.
Silver And Gold
So the krauts and the surrender monkeys are coming out of recession already. Good news... except the ECB might jack up interest rates again to head off inflation. So maybe not so good news. If other EU countries are recovering we better be hanging onto their coat tails for dear life.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Overpowered By Funk
I've finally realised why I've been to very few small gigs this year (all I've really done is go to Elbow in Wembley in March and U2 in Paris in July. I'm also going to Muse in the Dublin O2 in November) - the beer brands haven't been sponsoring anything this year. There's been no Bud Rising and no Heineken Green Energy. Coupled with a decision I made to stop going to Dublin for midweek gigs, all of a sudden I have had very little to go to. Besides, I have a feeling that I'm on the verge of entering a late 90's esque period of underwhelment with regards to new music. There's so much being raved about that just doesn't float my boat. Only the Friendly Fires album has proved to be a pleasant surprise.
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