Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tommy Tiernan is in a bit of trouble at the moment. In his latest live act he has a joke about Downs Syndrome. Some prude who attended his live gig, obviously having never heard of him before, took offence at the joke and made a bit of a stink about it.
Actually, all Tommy Tiernan said was that if you wanted to smuggle drugs or anything else into the country through an airport all you would have to do would be to get somebody with Downs Syndrome to smuggle it in for you. I wasn't at the gig, but I'd imagine he made this point using colourful language and he was probably funny too.
Honestly I think anyone who goes to a Tommy Tiernan stand-up show should leave their outrage at the door. He's bound to say or do something outrageous. If he didn't he wouldn't be worth going to see.
I also agree with him about what he said about the Downs Syndrome. If you want to be serious about the 'message' behind the joke you could argue that he was simply pointing out the way the people patronise people with Downs. If you see someone with Downs, the instant reaction is along the lines of 'ah, look. God love him'. In reality people with Downs are as devious as anyone else. They know the kind of reaction that they bring out in people and are happy to exploit it.
I saw this last week while I was working at a busy junction. People were standing at the pedestrian lights waiting for the green man. There was a heavy flow of traffic and there was no other safe way of getting across. It was one of those pedestrian lights that works on a very long timer and takes an age to change and if you were from the area you would know that but it was busy so people had to queue.
All except for one. Out stepped this lad with Downs Syndrome from the queue. He stepped off the footpath with his hand raised to stop the traffic. Obviously the line of traffic he had stepped into came to a sudden halt. If anyone apart from a Downs Syndrome guy had done this you would have been deafened by the sound of blaring horns.
He proceeded to do the same to get across another three lanes of traffic. Each one stopped to let him pass with his hand raised to stop them without a single parp of a horn.
I was standing on the side that he was crossing to. As he crossed the last line of traffic and stepped back onto the footpath, you should have seen the grin on his face! The cheeky bastard! Of course anyone would else would do the same if they thought they'd get away with it which just goes to show that they're no different to the rest of us. Tommy Tiernan was just pointing that out and having a laugh too.
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Sunday, November 25, 2007
I saw American Gangster today on the second attempt. The first time I went to see it in the cinema last weekend it was booked up. As it happened this was fine because I got to see Stardust instead. But I’d heard good things about American Gangster as well so I still wanted to see so I finally caught up with it today.
It’s based on the true story of a gangster called Frank Lucas (Denzille Washington) who set up a heroin supply route from Asia into the United States during the Vietnam war. I’d heard a little bit about his real-life story on the radio during the week which was a little bit of a spoiler for me. Nevertheless I had a great time.
In the wrong hands it could easily have become a black and white tale of the bad heroin dealer and the maverick cop (Det Richie Roberts, played by Russell Crowe) who was out to get him but it became much more than that. It also showed the corrupt cops, of whom there were an awful lot, and it showed all sides of Frank Lucas.
As is always the case it is possible to find good and bad in everyone and in Franks we could see the cold, heartless murderer, the supplier of death and misery to thousands, who was also kind to his mother, loyal to his family and the memory of the gangster who was his mentor. Interspersed with the story we also saw glimpses of the misery caused by heroin abuse, which were important to remind us of what it was the Lucas was dealing in.
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Saturday, November 24, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
As soon as I saw this in the shop today I wanted to try growing it from seeds! I never saw these before but they are called Dragon Fruit.
They look like something from the props department of Star Trek. You could just imagine an Away Team landing on some unknown planet only for one of these things to drop out of a tree and land on their heads. All I can say is that they just look really, really unusual.
They’re a little pricey too. They were selling for €2.99 in Tescos in Phibsboro Shopping Centre. Despite the price I just had to buy one. I was especially encouraged by the little description label beside the fruit which said that the fruit is full of tiny black seeds!
I was so new-fangled with the fruit that as soon as I could (my computer was playing up today) I went on the Internet to google Dragon Fruit. According to Wikipedia it’s also known as Pitaya. It’s a vinelike cactus plant that grows large white flowers which bloom only at night
I haven’t eaten it yet but apparently it tastes a bit like kiwifruit and you eat it in the same way, by scooping out the insides.
The good news is they can be grown from seeds without too much fuss. I planted some orange pips from an orange I bought in a shop about a month ago and now I have three seedlings who are all thriving at the moment. I’m going to try the same with these seeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitaya
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007
I was sorry to hear today that Jonathan Rhys Meyers mother had died. It is a deeply personal and tragic moment when a loved one dies and especially so since Jonathan had spoken in the past of being very close to his mother and also her young age, she was only 51.
Jonathan has been going through a hard time recently with alcohol abuse and being arrested for being drunk and disorderly. For this to happen at this time as well as whatever other trauma he's going through at the moment must be unbearably horrible.
I think there was something very wrong about the photos of Jonathan drinking from a can of cider in a street following his mothers death being released. While I had a look as quick as everyone else when I saw it in the paper today I still disagree with its publication.
If Rhys Meyers was a figure of real public importance rather than an actor there might be some genuine public interest in his present state of mind. Since he’s not, it really is none of our business. I genuinely hope he finds whatever help he needs.
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Monday, November 19, 2007
I just signed up for Twitter today.
Now, I know I'm at risk of sounding awfully backward here but I never heard of Twitter until about two weeks ago and even then I didn't know what it was. I'm afraid I'm still catching up with the whole Web 2.0 thing.
I couldn't sleep this morning. Since I was awake at 4am and I didn't have any work to do till 7am I thought I'd play around on the computer for a while to see if it would tire me out again. I had seen a Twitter widget on somebodys blog last night so that made me think about it again and I signed up for it this morning.
It definitely looks like it could be fun. It's a great idea to integrate texting with blogging, since I currently do both in roughly equal proportions. At the same time I feel a little uneasy about it. There's something a little Big Brother about the idea of accounting for your movements all of the time or maybe that's just the paranoia trying to escape.
Anyway, I've signed up for Twitter now. The next thing is to see find people to followed and be followed by!
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Sunday, November 18, 2007
I went to see
Stardust in the cinema with my girlfriend last night. I had gotten to pick the movie we were going to see and I had picked
American Gangster because an ad on the side of a bus told me it was every bit as much of an epic as
The Godfather. The queue for it was certainly of epic proportions and the showing that we were going to see as well as the one after it were both sold out. It is the first weekend so I suppose it was to be expected.
The same thing happened us the last time we went to the cinema. On that occasion Michelle had picked Ratatouille to watch but that had been booked out as well. That time we just picked a film more or less at random that was showing and that was how we ended up seeing The Counterfeiters. It was set in a Nazi Concentration Camp during World War II and was filmed in German with English subtitles. We probably would never have picked that film out of a line-up if it wasn't for Ratatouille being sold out but I ended up loving the film and I had a great night.
So when we saw American Gangster was sold out we did the same thing again and picked a film that still had seating available. Michelle knew someone who had read the book and loved it and then saw the film and loved it too so we went to see Stardust.
I had no idea what the film was going to be about as we went into it but I ended up loving it too. The film is a wonderful combination of fantasy, romance, action, adventure and comedy. The narration by Ian McKellan starts off in the same fashion as at the beginning of 300 but it quickly turns into something less darker and more humorous than that film.
Some of my favourite actors and comedians pop up here in unexpected places. Robert De Niro is a pirate and Ricky Gervais is a fence.
Overall the film is just a joy to watch.
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Friday, November 9, 2007
I was delighted to hear today that a month after the release of their new album In Rainbows online it has been downloaded more than a million times.
Radiohead made history when they decided to make their album available for download and give people the option to pay whatever they wanted.
In the first month 62% of the people who downloaded it chose to pay nothing. Of the 38% who paid for it the majority paid less than $4 while only 4% paid more than $12.
Do you think that sounds bad? That ‘only’ 38% of people paid for it. Well maybe ‘only’ 38% of people paid for it but at a minimum of $4 each and with over a million downloads Radiohead have made well over a million dollars from the release of their new album. This is much more than the cut they would have gotten from the sale of similar quantities of their album if they had released it through the more usual methods such as cd.
I am a huge fan of free downloads of music and I think that Radioheads initiative should be an example to other big bands: give your fans something for nothing, make a fortune from it and screw the record companies!
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Sunday, November 4, 2007
I started typing my name into Google Suggest this morning. As you type a search phrase it tries to guess what you’re typing and gives you a list of possibilities. I’d gotten as far as ‘sean mcgo’ before it guessed what I was looking for.
What Google Suggest also does is it tells you how many times that phrase has been searched for. While it doesn’t tell you over what time period, it was still interesting to see that the name Sean McGoldrick has been searched for 146,000 times. It seems that the guy in Japan wasn’t on his own when he was looking for Sean McGoldrick.
So much for my thinking I was unique! I doubt if 146,000 people were looking for information on this particular Sean McGoldrick. I just didn’t realize there were so many of us.
If you want to find out how unique you are try typing your name into Google Suggest but be prepared to be disappointed!
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Saturday, November 3, 2007
When I went into town today to buy some wire for my bonsai tree the first item on my agenda was to get some breakfast. It’s well over six months since I’ve done any serious grocery shopping so anything that I’ve eaten in that time that could be described as a meal has been bought pre-cooked, either to eat on the spot or to take-away.
My first idea was to go to the Bagel Factory on Harcourt St but that was closed, so I spent a while wandering around looking at my other options. Everywhere I thought of going was either closed or was already full. Or at least full enough for my liking. I usually prefer places that have plenty of free tables.
I know that 10:30am on a Saturday morning isn’t the busiest time of day but I was surprised by the amount of places that hadn’t opened yet. There was obviously enough business out there because the places that were open were quite busy.
Rather than keep walking around I settled on going to the Bagel Factory in Grafton St instead. This is a take-away-only place unlike the one in Harcourt St which has comfortable seating. I got the All-Day Eggworks on an onion multiseed bagel and coffee for the Breakfast Special price of €5.25. The Eggworks comes with bacon, sausage, mushrooms and tomatoes and is pretty delicious.
I took my bagel and coffee into St Stephens Green. The benches inside the gate were all taken but when I walked a little bit further in I found plenty of empty benches. I found a bench with a nice view of some trees.
Sometimes things work out for the best. This was one of those occasions. If your favorite places to eat are closed try your local park!
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Friday, November 2, 2007
There is more to kissing than just a potential prelude to sex, at least if you’re a woman. If you’re a man this may be bad news. In fact the first kiss could also easily be the last.
A study in sex differences in romantic kissing among college students found that, while there is a certain niceness to it, kissing has evolved among humans and some other species as a way to assess the health of a potential mate.
Women tend to have a better sense of smell and taste than men and this becomes even more heightened during ovulation.
Further reading:
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP05612631.pdf
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