RANT: Services in Ireland

Nov 25, 2007 by John    5 Comments    Posted under: waffle

I’m so sick of the service you get in this country. Yesterday we were in the Blanchardstown Petshop Superstore looking for an aquarium. That’s what junior wants from the Ho Ho Ho guy. We were waiting for someone to talk us through our options, standing there with our body language blasting out WE NEED HELP, but we just got ignored by all the teenage staff. The place is ran by teenagers! After a good few minutes I gave up and asked one of them if he could come over and answer some questions. No response, he just skulks over as if I’d just told him he had to stop playing with his friends and come in and do his homework. Here’s the conversation…

Me: “So we’re thinking of an aquarium about the size of this one but there’s no price on it, how much is it?”

Spotty: “Well it depends if you want a cold water tank or a warm water tank.”

Me: “What’s the difference?”

Spotty: “The cold water tank is for cold water, the warm water tank is for warm water.”

I swear that’s exactly what he said. We both just stared at him, deciding whether to just walk out or maybe grab him by the ear and see if there was a superior nearby who’s older than sixteen (there wasn’t). But Spotty cracked before I did and explained that you could only put goldfish in cold water and tropical fish in warm water. We had to drag everything else out of him. It felt like we were asking him where he’d been all night, and what time do you call this!?

Who the duck runs this place? Why do they only have moody teenagers working there? Why is nearly every experience in a retail outlet in Ireland similar to this one? It’s the same in the dreadful B&Q, Woodies* and Tescos. (And we all know what the likes of Eircom and NTL are like). What happened to treating customers like customers? Oh Christ, that’s it. I’m officially old. I’ve just had a birthday that made me closer to 40 than 30 and a gear has shifted already. Seriously though, I’m really sick of this kind of service. The rare occasions where I’ve come across good service really stick out a mile these days:

• Aston formal wear.Ok the site is very dated but the service isn’t. This is where I hired a suit when I got married and the guy who runs the place really knows how to treat a customer. Excellent service all round.
• Blacknight are definitely the most headache free and value for money web hosting company in Ireland but their customer care is really excellent too. Any problem or query I ever have is always dealt with instantly. I always get people who I do sites for to use blacknight. I have nothing else to do with the company honest!
• www.computerbits.ie . I ordered a firewire card from computerbits earlier this year, and there was no sign of it after a couple of weeks. Then a guy rang me to tell me it had been discontinued but he’d try other places. Then he kept kept me up to date by email and a couple of phone calls and eventually gave up on his supplier and offered me a better model for the same price. I paid €40 and the one I got was worth €85. Bargain!
• The people on the tills in Marks and Spencers deserve a nod just for acknowledging your presence, rather than craning around you to tell Tracey what Sharon did to Trevor last night.

So the moral of the story is, keep it up! It doesn’t go unnoticed. As for the other guys, I reckon your days are numbered. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow but soon and for the rest of your life every single type of service will be rated online, so you better start sending your teenagers to how to treat a customer school.

*An exception to the case in Woodies is one really friendly helpful guy who funnily enough happens to be in a Rabodirect ad. The guy with the beard:

Update

I can’t believe I forgot something that I definitely meant to include in this post. Someone who really deserves a big up is Allie who runs the Alpha school of driving. I had Allie for a few lessons and he goes through everything. For example he’ll show you exactly how to reverse around a corner, step-by-step. And was over the moon when I passed, first time, thanks to him.

Compare this to the lesson I got from the Irish School of Motoring while Allie was on holiday. It was supposed to be a pre-test but she didn’t go through anything under the bonnet, even though I asked if I needed to know this. After my dismal two attempts at reversing around a corner, said we better give up on that one. And she spent the first 10 minutes texting her friend, not paying any attention to my driving! Overall, she didn’t go through half of the stuff that I needed to know. Luckily Allie gave me his own pre-test as soon as he got back from hols and I definitely wouldn’t have passed without that lesson. Highly recommended. Ring Allie on: 0879860170.

Alive and kicking

Nov 19, 2007 by John    3 Comments    Posted under: news, waffle

Fi beat me to it but after a very long time trying to get to this point, we have a baby with a heart beat. I took this video with my phone, and the sending directly to youtube from phone thing worked for once. So I might chuck a load up now. Videos that is. We’re delighted that it seems to have passed the usual abnormality tests, but a few seconds into the video you can see quite clearly that it’s actually an alien baby.

Accident on O’Connell street

Nov 12, 2007 by John    11 Comments    Posted under: news, waffle

Bit shaken today. I was walking up O’Connell street this morning on the way to the LUAS, walking in the middle as always to avoid the crowds and the paper pushers. Just past the Spire I see this big truck coming up on the path. I was thinking what’s he up to? he’s going to hit that sign post if he doesn’t slow down. Then when I saw he had no intention of slowing down, and was about ten feet away from me, I jumped out of the way. For a second I thought he has to stop, there’s a sign post there! And there was guy just in front of the sign post! I don’t know where I looked just then, I just got out of the way as quickly as possible and then when I looked back, the truck was still going, knocking down everything in its path, and then it stopped at the big christmas tree.

I looked around to see where the other guy had ran to. He hadn’t! Jesus! He was lying twenty feet away in the trail of the carnage looking a bit mangled. His clothes were half ripped off him, and he was very still. I don’t think he ever saw the truck. I think he might have been looking at a phone or an i-pod or something. Shit! I felt terrible. If I’d been thinking a bit quicker, I might just have been able to grab him out of the way. The poor kid, might have been about twenty. A cop arrived very quickly and the kid started groaning horribly. Sounded horrible but was probably a good sign.

Another guy jumped up to the truck to check out the driver. The driver said he just blacked out. Still a bit shaken and upset, I gave my number to the cops, and got some hot sweet tea before coming into work. Can’t stop thinking about that poor guy. Really hope he comes out of it ok.

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Update #1

This was just put up on RTE: http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/1112/rta2.html?rss

Lorry accident at the Spire

Monday, 12 November 2007 09:23

A lorry ended up on the central meridian close to the Spire on Dublin’s O’Connell Street.

Gardaí are attending the incident, which has caused traffic disruption on O’Connell St, northbound.

There are no reports of any injuries.

No reported injuries? That’s odd.

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Update #2

Same RTE link now says:

Boy injured in O’Connell St accident

Monday, 12 November 2007 11:22

A 16-year-old boy has been seriously injured after being struck by a truck which mounted the centre median close to the Spire on O’Connell Street in Dublin.

He was taken to the Mater Hospital after the collision, which occurred at around 8.20am..

Northbound traffic on O’Connell Street in Dublin is down to just one lane. The remaining lane, which is the bus lane, is open to all traffic.

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Update #3 12:40

Just got a phonecall from Garda. The guy that got hit was talking in the hospital. He’s got two broken legs and a broken pelvis and will be in the operating theatre for the day but it sounds like he’s going to be ok. Eventually. Phew.

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Update #4

Some friends told me there are photos on Flickr. It’s a small world alright; turns out both of the people who took these pics (Redmum and Eoghan MCabe) have blogs that I occasionally read. Redmum’s O’Connell street Photos. Eoghan McCabe’s O’Connell street photo.

Also someone from The Star rang me after lunch. At least I’ll get such a small mention that they won’t be able to do some bad punning with my name. Right. Think I’ll leave it at that with the updates on this thing. Feel like I’m milking this for the sake of blogginess now while that poor chap is in the Mater (out my window) in agony.

Corky

Nov 1, 2007 by John    2 Comments    Posted under: waffle

I grew up with a guy called Corky, who was named after a weird deformity that made his left leg spiral around like a corkscrew. He walked with the strangest limp you’ll ever see, his left leg kind of twirled downwards as he put weight on it and then un-twirled as he dragged his foot behind. Corky was a great laugh when we were younger and he rarely let his disability get in the way of playing football tennis, climbing trees or doing knick knocks, though The Jogger never seemed to administer his trademark kick-up-the-arse quite as hard on Corky as he did me.

As he got older his good nature began to strain to the jaunts of the other lads on the street. He grew to despise the nickname that he had at one stage even called himself. And he grew to despise his twisted leg. He grew to despise everyone, including himself and including me. He swore revenge on the lads who slagged him most, and the more he swelled with bile, the less we saw of each other. He started to see more of his older cousin, Mushroom, a nasty individual with a propensity to torturing helpless animals and an evil grin to show how much he enjoyed it.

Ronan Doyle, the biggest bully on the street, wasn’t thwarted by Corky’s dark accomplice. If anything it spurned him on. He used to get cans of spray-paint and draw caricatures of Corky everywhere – with that corkscrew limb exaggerated more than ever. Corky and Mushroom disappeared for a whole summer one year, just as we were all coming through the harder side of our teens. Doyler showed early signs of maturity, and began to cringe at the site of his own graffiti. He did everything he could to get rid of it, even painting a wall or two, and by the end of the summer as Corky returned, tensions had eased.

We all grew up and left Shankill one by one. Every Christmas you’d see the same old faces in the local, Byrnes. It turned out Corky never left Shankill, and neither did the bile leave him. Still, I always had one pint with Corky. Old time’s sake is as good a sake as any. Last Christmas was unbearable though. Never a more miserable pint have I shared with any man. He just thrived in telling me how much he hated everyone in the pub, one by one, he slagged off the old boys, and saving the best for last he literally spat out nothing but depravity at the sight of Ronan Doyle. I wiped his splashes from my face and left him there, seething. He hardly noticed me leave and continued to spew bile at the vacant stool I left behind.

Then, on Christmas morning word had spread. Ronan Doyle had been found dead somewhere between the pub and his Ma’s house. A terrible wound was left in his chest, a mushy hole of torn flesh. I felt the blood drain from my face at the thought of it. Before we went our separate ways, those many summers ago, sitting on top of our favourite tree watching the darts go by, Corky often described how he’d love to get a corkscrew and tear out Ronan Doyle’s heart. And that he did. I knew it was him. But no one else seemed to know. The thought chilled me to the bone. I had to do something. I couldn’t handle the idea of going to the cops with this mad idea straight out of some horror movie. I decided to go see his family. Or at least what was left of it, a pisshead dad who I caught leaving the house, as pissed as ever. I explained everything frantically, my embarrassment of the whole thing shadowed by his drunkenness. He didn’t want to know. He believed me but he didn’t care!

I went back to Corky’s house. I could hear sobbing coming down from his bedroom window. The front door was open. I entered the house where I’d spent many of my pre-teen years. I shouted his name but he didn’t seem to hear. I went upstairs and straight to his room but before I had a chance to open the door, it swung open. And there was Mushroom. A somehow darker version of Mushroom, all innocence, whatever little of it there ever was, completely washed away, his evil grin titanic on his shriveled face. Then, in a Flash he raised his hand. For a split second I thought he had a corkscrew but it was far worse. A big kitchen knife cut the air and made for my face. I somehow managed to grab his arm. I can’t describe the terror I felt. I actually tried to scream and nothing came out. My vocal cords had completely abandoned me even though my arms managed to wrestle on in autopilot. I eventually managed to stutter, I heard voices in the street below, and as I felt the anger within me strengthen the power of my voice I shouted. And the words that majestically parted my lips were “Happy Halloween!”.

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I actually did know a guy called Corky growing up but the rest is bollix! There was nothing wrong with his leg or anything else but I did wake up screaming last night at the end of a long and realistic nightmare where he tried to kill me with a kitchen knife! Thought it’d make a good halloween yarn!

The Persistence of Memory

Sep 4, 2007 by John    4 Comments    Posted under: art, books, brain training, master your memory, memory, painters, painting, tony buzan, waffle

A few years ago I got sick of having a terrible memory. I’ve since nailed it down to a slightly bizarre portion of bad memory in that I can’t for the life of me remember proper nouns; pubs, shops, roads, restaurants, people etc. However, like most people I’m better with faces, much better though, I could see a bloke walk by in the street and remember that he was two people ahead of me, in a queue in a chipper, in Dun Laoighre, eight years ago.

So apart from my otherwise terrible memory, I have a pretty good visual memory and when I came across a book called Master Your Memory by Tony Buzan, I scanned the back cover and saw that it had a system to improve your memory through your visual memory. So you can remember long numbers as images in a story for example. But it didn’t really make any sense without it’s  precursor Use your memory. So I bought that and spent every morning on the bus to work practicing the techniques in both. And they are fairly amazing techniques. Definitely a step above your average self help book.

The first thing I memorised, just for practise, was Pi to 500 decimal places.
The second half of Master Your Memory contains lists of trivia to memorize so
I went to work on them.

• All the countries of the world – including their capitals and currency
• The periodic table – including atomic number, atomic weights etc
• 100 most frequently used words in Spanish
• 100 Painters – including a famous work, its location, the artist’s lifespan, nationality and school of art

For the list of painters, I tracked down all the paintings on the web to make it a bit easier, and then discovered that the a lot of the data isn’t that well researched on any of the lists. When I reviewed the book on Amazon, I slated the content (while praising the system) for not researching any of the material properly even in it’s later editions. And Tony Buzan is definitely not short on pennies.

So, after quite a bit of waffle, the main point of this post is that list of paintings – if you’re looking for all the paintings in this list like I did, or just want to have a look through 100 famous paintings, here’s my list of 100 Artists, thoroughly researched, and backed up by a few books I’ve read over the years. And more importantly, there’s an image to go with each painting. There were a few cases where I couldn’t find the famous work that Tony Buzan chose, the fact that they were so hard to find was testamant in itself that they weren’t the most relevant works. In a couple of other cases I chose a different painting anyway just because it seemed much more relevant – but in most cases, I stuck to the original list as much as possible – apart from correcting all the mistakes, which were mostly dates and locations of paintings.

By the way, after years of this ‘Brain Training’ I still have a terrible memory! It didn’t do a thing to improve my day to day memory. Arsebags! Still an amusing way to pass the time at the bus stop though as you have to keep going through these lists in your head. Specially if you have a head like a sieve, like I do.

100 Artists – 100 paintings

Escape

Aug 31, 2007 by John    6 Comments    Posted under: waffle

On my brief trip between Luas seat and office chair this morn I felt myself brimming with happiness and excitement. My head was fizzing with thoughts of foreign lands and strange new exciting people. And the adventure was afoot! What the fuck is wrong with me thought I? I know it’s Friday but I’m walking through a grey industrial estate. I should be Les Miserables.

Then it dawned on me these thoughts were just a hangover from the book I was absorbed in en route, Shantaram. Wow! Powerful stuff this reading business. Haven’t read a novel in ages. Non-fiction has been floating my boat for some time. Welcome back my old friends, Fantasy and Escape. I’ve missed you. But then I got to the canteen and had to stand behind some idiot for a whole minute as she stirred her coffee cup in that exact place where I needed to place my cup and scald my teabag. Argh! How stupid is that. Can’t you see I’m standing beside you with this cup for a reason? Wipe that stupid smile off your face , and get the fuck already! The swirling aromas of Bombay and dark eyes of mysterious girls flitted away and Grumpy Old Young Man was back with a thump.

Embra Fringe 2007

Aug 22, 2007 by John    3 Comments    Posted under: comedy, edinburgh fringe, music, waffle

I went over to Edinburgh for the weekend. That’s my third long weekend in a row, yeehaw. Don’t know how I’ll cope with a 5 day week next week. Have wanted to go over to the fringe for ages and ended up going at the last minute(ish). Had a fantastic time, think I’d much prefer this than a music festival these days. I forgot what a beautiful place Edinburgh is too.

Only booked tickets for two events and left everything else to randomness. The first was Limmy’s Show, www.limmy.com has been one of my favourite sites for years. His silly, but slightly obscure videos and playthings appeal to my mentality. He got the show solely on the popularity of his site and hasn’t done stand up or anything before. It’s a brilliant show – a mixture of recorded videos and live one-man skits. All the material was brand new, no reference to the site at all, though I was tempted to whisper Requiem or shout Gies yer jaicket myself.

The other highlight of the weekend and the only other thing we pre-booked (you get what you pay for) was Fuerzabruta which was absolutely fantastic. It’s like a big a club, staged in a circus, featuring large-scale physical theatre, including overhead syncronised swimming in a ee-through pool, and treadmill stages with people running for their lives. Lasted about an hour and my mouth was wide open for a lot of it. The show would work great in a big club but that would lose some of the audience, everyone should see this. Here’s some video I took:

Got ticket’s for a few things at the 1/2 price hut. First show of the weekend was VHS 2 – Planet of the Tapes. Now I hate all things digital. Well maybe not all things but just things that used to be on tape, which is erm tapes and videos. So I loved the fact that a movie nerd pretty much dedicated a whole show to how crap DVDs are… mostly stand-up with a few pre-recorded videos.

Pappy’s fun club were a bunch of smug students. Well one of them at least. Actually maybe only one of them, the rest were likable enough. Show started off pretty crap but it turned out that the first half was mostly just building blocks for the second – and when they got to the bit where they swapped themselves with audience members and dissapeared while the audience members repeated earlier skits – well that was fairly hilarious.

Jesus I’m feeling really lazy now – not sure I’d intended to review the whole weekend, so here’s quick roundup:

• Shaun Hughes was the biggest show we went to – was good but just a pretty normal standup nothing ground breaking.
• Had great fun at Maxwell’s Fullmooners but by the time Ed Byrne was on I was awake about 22 hours and nodded off. Luckily I was up in a balcony and wasn’t caught snoozing. Apparently he totally redeemed hismelf of a few years of carphone warehouse ads.
• The other late nighter – I couldn’t tell you who played but everyone was pissed down the basement of a pub. Was really up close and personal – I shared an intimate moment with one comedian and an audience member as he showed us a clip of him teabagging a mate who was asleep. Whole night was great fun altough I think the biggest difference between Sean Hughes and this lot was several pints and a few whiskies. Always helps.

My generous host Nessa:

Some street entertainment:

One of the fringe areas at night:

Rest of photos.

Stockholm

Aug 17, 2007 by John    3 Comments    Posted under: stockholm, travel, waffle

What a great place Stockholm is. There’s no big wow factor but you start to notice small things. No traffic. Kids free everywhere. Everybody very polite, not to mention brown-skinned, blue eyed and blonde. Get this, in Sweden, a couple can take up to 13 months off work between them, with the state paying 80% of the wages. And a lot of companies will pay all expenses for adoption! Not that we experienced this over the weekend. A father gets two ‘Daddy months’ off work. That’s it I’m moving to Sweden and having three children a year. I’m hoping polygamy is also encouraged.

Didn’t do too much tourist stuff although we did go to skansen. Basically it’s a big park full of stuff, open air museams, a zoo, play areas, farms etc. Mostly we hung around some of the great public spaces in Sweden.

The first night we just needed to pop across the road to a lovely lake, where we lay in the grass and sipped some cans, with a Jazz band in the corner, people playing frisbee and some Swedish block game, while black bunnies fluffily hopped around! Didn’t know there was such a thing as wild black rabbits. Stumbled upon this place on the right after Skansen and just lazed around in beanbags listening to deep house for hours.

There’s some funny licensing laws in Sweden that meant we had to go to an off-license before a particular time on a particular day and buy all our drink for the weekend. I got a bit carried away and got lured by lots of strange coloured bottles with sickly sweet liquids. As you can imagine we drank the whole lot on the first night and ended up doing lots of silly dancing. But when the girls insisted on ABBA, I took a running jump through the window and ended up sitting on a branch overhanging the lake, which surprisingly didn’t end in disaster. I swear if we were on the tenth floor rather then the first I still would have jumped. I’ve grown to appreciate the fact that ABBA have some very intricate arrangements and are quite talented and all that – but I still hate them!

Rest of the photos here (but I still have to upload some more)

A dolphin obituary

Aug 8, 2007 by John    2 Comments    Posted under: news, waffle

You know when a famous person dies and and there’s an outpouring of grief and respect, the odd RIP email here and there. Well there’s another 6 Billion of us, and growing, so who cares? It’s a much greater loss when a whole species disappears. It’s just insane. By a mere stroke of luck this little planet has managed to invoke life, many strange and beautiful forms of life. Yet some just pop out of existence forever. Very sad day when that happens. Slightly sadder when it’s such a unique creature as the baiji, a freshwater dolphin anomalous to the Yangtze river. This is the first aquatic mammal species to become extinct since either the Japanese Sea Lion or Caribbean Monk Seal, both of which became extinct in the 1950s. Baiji’s have been in existence for 25 Billion years and now they’re gone.

Fucking humans. I can think of quite a few I’d rather see go before a whole species.

Mannequin

Jul 26, 2007 by John    No Comments    Posted under: art, Chirico, design, Metaphysical, painting, waffle

This post would probably be more at home on homebug – but I’ll take the conch on this one – every morning I walk by Clerys on O’Connel street and wonder WTF are they thinking!? D’you ever see a big company do something very wrong and you can’t figure out why no one has told them yet? Or even more likely is that every body knows the blunder yet some middle-mismanagement or office politico prevents it from happening. So here’s the thing; they gutted the inside of the shop and got the decoraters in. Grand. Paid a small fortune no doubt. Yet Jo-walking-by-Soap wouldn’t know any different because their shop windows look like they’re still being decorated by the same dusty old window dresser for the last 30 years. They need to take a walk up Grafton street or rent a copy of Mannequin!

I spy with my little eye an opportunity to BIG UP one of my favourite dead artists, Giorgio de Chirico. He had a thing for mannequins you see. De Chirico is one of the few surreal artists who managed to capture the essence of dreams. People say that about Dali but his paintings were way too polished and detailed to vaguely resemble any dream. Chirico was a big influence to Dali, as well as Max Ernst, and Magritte to name a few, and some of them directly copied his Metaphysical style. Every time I see that tower from the LUAS, (somewhere between Windy Arbour and Cowper ), I’m reminded of his Nostalgia of the Infinite (below) even though they’re nothing alike. Actually I think every time I see a tower I’m reminded of it.

Paddy’s Day on April Fools

Jul 19, 2007 by John    3 Comments    Posted under: atheism, waffle

So you’ve heard about this dilemma that the Catholic church are facing? It’s a clash of dates between between an early Easter bunny day and Paddy’s day (2008). The next available day for Pat was April 1st, but they’ve decided that isn’t suitable either. If you ask me, April Fools day is spot on. I don’t know why we celebrate a man who was one of the first missionaries to come over to us fine pagans, and infect us with such heavy-handed Christianity. He was one of the first bishops in a church that continues to interfere with our lives in these seemingly dark dark ages.

I know I hold some unpopular views, and this collection of thoughts is right up there; I’ve never been very patriotic, it’s all just random birth. The weight that some people give to that random event is beyond me but the more I think about Paddy’s day, the more I think how much of a farce the whole thing is. There’s such an anti-English attitude in this country because the ruling classes of England invaded our country many moons ago, yet when an Englishman comes over and tells us what to believe, what do we do? We make it our official day to celebrate being Irish!

I’ll take my day off work thank’s very much, but personally I won’t be celebrating Patrick’s day. I’m sure junior will get to enjoy the parade. Just like he’ll get an Easter egg and Christmas presents. Until he’s old enough to decide for himself, I won’t be spoiling the better things that come with all this religious mumbo jumbo, by forcing my beliefs on him, unlike the children of the brainwashed who continue to brainwash their own, in billions all over the world.

Fat or pregnant?

Jun 7, 2007 by John    2 Comments    Posted under: waffle

Ever play the fat or pregnant game? A young woman stepped onto the Luas this morn, and looked around for an empty seat with a bit more hunger than your average Daniel Dayer. So I glanced at her tummy, hmmm neither fat nor pregnant, back to the book. An exasperated sigh made me look up again. Was she or wasn’t she? I couldn’t decide. She was wearing one of those currently fashionable tops that just don’t help the cause at all. Not quite maternity wear but similar enough to confuse me further. You have to be careful in situations as dangerous as these, offer your seat to a woman that’s not quite old enough, or fat but not pregnant and her laser eyes will weld you to your seat. But there was something in her eyes that made me think there was something in her tummy, so I played the safe bet and got up without saying a word to her. Others glanced at the seat, she growled, they wimpered, she sat.

Maybe pregnant ladies should wear a sticker that says “Baby not bulge“, or “Bun in the oven, not in the mouth“. But then I’d have to wear a sticker that says “My feet get very sore when I stand for more than a minute, and keep getting sorer, I really should look into it again but I did go to a doctor last year and she told me to walk around on my tippy toes for ten minutes every day. But I actually think she was drunk and taking the piss.

Bunnies!

May 23, 2007 by John    2 Comments    Posted under: books, films, music, random, waffle

Two of my favorite things share a common theme – bunnies! Donnie Darko and a book by Bill Drummond called 45. Ok, they’re called Echo and the Bunnymen, so the link to Donnie Darko is pretty obvious. But another subtle link is that in 45, Drummond (who managed the Bunnymen), becomes obsessed with the album cover for Crocodiles, because by pure coincidence, the tree in the background looks like a big bunny; but no-one else he shows it too can see it.

45 is an absolute gem, it’s autobiographical, but it’s more like a random diary of highly amusing events between his last book, 33, which he wrote when he was 33, and 45 which he wrote at… well done! Blue Peter badge for you. If you can see the connection here, you’ll expect another book at 75. 45 is full of boyish quests, poignant observations, and personal superstitions.

For some odd reason I’ve always had a lot more time for personal, made-up superstitions than I have for established ones (horoscopes, broken mirrors, god etc). One example of Drummond’s hokery pokery is his story about drawing a magical ley line across a UK map, somehow guided by the magnetic poles and somthing to do with Elvis, then making his way along this line by foot, while concocting his own soup, in various locations, for anyone who’s happy to eat it.

Anyway, chatting in work this morning, we were trying to remember the first track in the original Donnie Darko, and of course it’s The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen (a couple of minutes in, in the clip above). Of course because I saw this version first, I think it’s a much better opening track, than the one used for the editors cut (Never tear us apart by INXS) and almost as good as the school scene with Head over Heels by Tears for Fears. I can watch that scene over and over, it’s better than any music video, I’ll refrain from adding ‘ever’. These are the kind of films I love, where each scene can stand on it’s own as a great piece. Mullholland drive is chocka block with these. They’re especially potent when crafted around some enchanting music. Silencio!

More bunny waffle; My standard doodle is a cartoon bunny. I get bored very easily, and I always want to be ‘doing’ something, so I fidget and doodle a lot at meetings etc. I’ve drawn this bunny hundreds of times. Annuvver fing is that I tend to get carried away with things that I get into. When I was 11 I got a rabbit. One year later I had a hundred foot compound, housing about 50 different rabbits, I mixed my own rabbit food which I sold to people who had previously bought rabbits from me, and I also sold rabbits to pet shops. I had special breeding bucks that were bred to sire litters of 12 or so, rather than a standard 5 or 6. I can honestly say I had more of a disposable income when I was 12 than I do now! I also had terrapins, mice, a single pigeon, budgies, guinea-pigs, koi, a hooded crow, and a gerbil city. They say pets can help teach kids a thing or two about life, the unverse and everything. I’ll say! I had to do some things that no 12 year old should have to experience, like mercy-killing sick rabbits and drowning baby gerbils born with no legs. And I still, very frequently, have dreams about rabbits burrowing their way out of the garden!

“You still wake up sometimes, don’t you Clarice? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs. “

What a load of waffle! So much for writing about web design.

Love it or hate it?

May 13, 2007 by John    No Comments    Posted under: waffle

Don’t mean to start any brown-tonguing here but I was reading the always-amusing annie rhiannon blog and one of the comments reminded me how much of a fence-sitter I am on lots of things. Whenever someone says “you either love it or hate it/him/her” I think nope definitely neither love nor hate. Bono? Nope, don’t love him or hate him. Have always found U2 to be pretty MOR, but that’s another fettle of kish. Southpark? Now that’s a popular one for the love/hate brigade but, nope, I like it now and then, can be really funny and on the button but those voices just get on my tits sometimes. No love or hate there. I can’t remember any of the other things I neither love nor hate so I’ve had a look to see what google thinks I should love or hate.

A ‘controversial’ statue of Jesus. Love or hate? Could care less more like. looks like a pretty good craftmanship but I don’t extly want to shag it.

Katamari (Playstation game)- Ok I’m a bit too honest for my own good sometimes but I had a go of this before and…yep… loved it! And I’ve just been looking for somewhere that I can buy it. Somewhere that’s not Amazon. Moving on swiftly.

An album called Drag it up by The Old 97′s ? No I’ve never heard of them either but I listened to a few tracks on Amazon and they just sound alright to me. They’re not exactly firing up emotions as powerful as love or hate.

How about some movies…

Scrooged according to one reviewer. Gimme a break, it’s a light-hearted Christmas farce, how could anyone love it or hate it?

The Rocky Horror picture show Nope. I like it. Standard fare to use the love/hate cliche for any cult movies innit? But not always true. Not for em anyway.

I found a whole list of ‘love or hate’ movies. Napolean Dynamite: Like. Royal Tenenbaums: Like but definitely not love. Kill Bill: Alright but pretty forgettable for me . Gimme Jackie Brown or Pulp any day. Lost in Translation: Really liked it but didn’t love it. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless mind: Ouch got me again. Love it to bits. At the same time, I’m glad to be reminded I’m not completely passionless!

Now here’s one that definitely gets me some points back. Banner advertising according to this guy. Who the fuck would love banner advertising? You either hate it or, let’s see, really really don’t like it.

Similarly, I’m a bit of fence-sitter on a lot of issues. I think fence sitting is a wise option on some things. It’s those nutters who think they have everything figured out, are 100% right, think everything is black or white, and think they have to convince everyone to of their beliefs. They’re the ones that worry me. Priests, Pro-lifers, Preachers and Pricks.

I must try some marmite. I might just like it.

Flip up side ya head.

May 4, 2007 by John    No Comments    Posted under: art, random, waffle

Random computer thingy:

Discovered this a while ago by accident and then forgot about it. But it just happened again. I think it’s because I have a dodgy keyboard with sticky keys. I probably should clean it – but the last time I took a keyboard apart to clean it, I had to type without any Ts or Us for weeks. Which was grea fn!

I haven’t mentioned what I’m on about yet have I? Well here it is. If you press CTRL + ALT + any of the arrow keys on your keyboard, you can rotate your screen left or right, or flip it upside down. Mental innit? Press CTRL + ALT + UP arrow for normality. Didn’t work? Must be only the newer machines. Only works in work for me. This can come in very handy if you have an upside down head.

Apparently this was just supposed to be a feature for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition but got carried through to standard intel machines.

Incidentally, I was going to add images of the shortcut keys before I caught a dose of The Laziness, but they weren’t as easy to find as I’d imagined. However I did stumble across some interesting paintings of keyboard keys.