A Monday Rant…
I intended having a delightful home made lunch today which was to involve bread, grated cheddar cheese, rocket salad, chorizo and raspberries. All bought within the past few days. All with best before dates of September 16th or later. Yet the only thing still edible is the chorizo. The cheese has the beginnings of mould as does the bread. The rocket salad is covered in a brownish liquid and smells like a knacker’s armpit. The raspberries have gone all hairy and bacteria laden. Also like a knacker’s armpit. Which is not good. Not good at all.
And I wouldn’t mind but the salad was sealed tightly and the cheese came in a resealable bag type thing and was airtight. I wonder are manufacturers taking the piss with their best before dates? I’d take them with a pinch of salt but that’d probably be gone off too. So is there a greater conspiracy at play here?
If I wasn’t so lazy I’d bring it all back and throw it at the supermarket’s door in protest. Or get my money back. One or t’other. But the point is this, I am most annoyed that my lunch options have dwindled to just chorizo.
So get your act together food manufacturers of Ireland. Or else. Yeah?
It’s never over till it’s over…
You know the way certain songs don’t end but instead just fade out slowly? Well that just bugs me greatly.
To me a song is, or should be, a narrative, a story almost. It has to start somewhere, obviously, and by the same token should end somewhere but very often they don’t they just fade out. It’s either lazy songwriting or lazy production but either way it’s lazy.
Many great songwriters and recording artists are guilty of it. There’s just too many to list unfortunately. In fact I’d say it’s been happening since the dawn of recorded music.
Maybe it’s dictated by a higher power, ie the record company, but still I feel cheated. Almost like I’ve been brought on a journey that trailed off to nowhere. It’s the equivalent of a movie just slowly fading to black in the middle of the third act as the projectionist slowly dims the projector’s bulb. No good. We need closure. We need conclusions.
Whether it ends on a cymbal crashing, a chord jangling or on a final word all I want is for songs to have proper, actual endings. Is that too much to ask?
“Please take off your belt sir.”
A little piece of me dies every time I enter an airport. They are the most soul-destroying places. Devoid of personality, absolutely lacking in character. So clinical, so synthetic.
Lacking humanity, empathy. Bureaucracy reigns. Your rights take a high jump.
The food is always bad. The prices even worse.
Are there any more soulless places on this planet of ours?
Oh and I’m just back from a few days holiday just in case you were wondering!
A Monday rant…
So I spent the weekend in Kilkenny. Good fun. Much frolics. All above board.
But today I must centre a rant at Irish Rail / Iarnród Éireann for their ridiculous pricing policy.
On the way down to Kilkenny I was running a tad late so I booked my ticket online at a not inconsiderable price of €18 for a single and picked it up at Heuston. I only got a single as there was a chance I was to get a lift back to Dublin on Sunday so no point paying the extra for a return. Worked out fine. Met lads on train, weekend kicked off. All good.
Then yesterday that lift back to Dublin never transpired so I got the train. When I got to MacDonagh Station in Kilkenny I was told that a single ticket was €34. What the fuck I thought. Then I was told it was cheaper to get a return ticket @ €32. Again what the fuck? How? What?
So it’s cheaper to get a return than a single? I’d love to hear the explanation for that particular logic.
So I thought well fuck it I’ll go online and get another €18 single. Except you can only do that at least 30 minutes before the departure time. I only had about 8 minutes to spare so that ruled that out. Convenient? For me, no. For Irish Rail, yes. The phrase over a barrel springs to mind.
So I had to shell out €32 for a monthly return ticket for a single journey. What an absolute rip off.
And the funny thing is this. Irish Rail are trying to make people use the online service as it will save them on labour costs. Yet in Kilkenny you still have to pick up the ticket bought online from the man at the ticket desk. Which, to my mind at least, defies all commercial logic. Fools.
So all in all I’m gravely pissed off at Irish Rail and their shitty ticket pricing policy. And their shitty slow trains. What must our European visitors make of it all?
The sooner we get a new government, and with it a Minister for Transport with a bit of cop on, the better.
A shake of the hand then a dig in the face…
There are two people in this world, who should I ever meet them, their hands I would gladly shake… before immediately punching them in the face.
Well there are probably definitely more than just two but I need to focus here on the post in hand.
So who are these 2 people you may well ask. They are the he/she who invented a) Croc shoes and b) Ugg boots. See I’d shake their hands for getting away with making millions for inventing something so fucking unbelievably ugly (in both cases). That’s admirable that is.
Then BANG! I’d punch them in the face for inventing something so fucking unbelievably ugly and inflicting it on a society so stupid to pay good money for these footwear abominations. Particularly fucking Ugg boots. They’re everywhere. They’re fine if you’re Helen Keller. But they look like something a crap animator designed as footwear for a crap cartoon character. Yet they’ve sold millions of the fucking things.
Fucking Ugg Boots
As for Crocs. Well if you work as a lifeguard at a pool or something like that well then Crocs are functional, useful even. Like all over flip-flops, a great addition to the wardrobe of any swimmer or surfer I’m sure. And that’s just fine. For kids even they’re colourful and quirky. Grand. But a grown up wearing them in normal society, say going to Tesco? No. That’s just wrong. Wearing them to work? Wronger still. Wearing them to the pub? You should be hung by the balls. Wearing them with socks? Don’t get me fucking started. I’d say Joseph Fritzl wears Crocs with socks.
Fucking Croc shoes
Shake hands. Then punch. End of.
Blog post of the month anyone?
Cop yourselves on people…
Why do people from places north of Dublin say they’re going “up to Dublin”? It makes no sense at all at all, as Miley used to say.
That way they’d have to circumnavigate the globe northwards taking in both the Arctic Circle and Antartica on the way before getting “up to Dublin”. That’s a journey of some 40,000 kilometres you crazies.
Get it right is all I ask.
End of rant.
The other day…
I was sitting on a bus heading into town when 3 drug addicts (former or present I’m not sure) got on. Nothing really unusual there. But hey, live and let live. There was a wide eyed young boy of about six with them.
They tried to walk on without paying but the bus driver was having none of it and demanded the fare. They started shouting at him, obviously because they didn’t want to have to pay like the rest of us. It felt like a scene from Adam & Paul. The driver stood his ground and eventually they paid. But not before hurling all sorts of abuse at the guy. He was Eastern European you see. “Shouldn’t be allowed on the buses never mind bleedin drivin them”, kinda sums up their approach. Subtle. Sledgehammer. Thankfully the driver was well able to deal with them. Scumbags. But what bugs me is that they were demanding their “right” to free travel. These fuckers contribute nothing to society. In fact they are a huge drain on the nation’s resources. You’d think they could be polite and even slightly embarassed to be such leeches. But no; they demand and demand and are extremely abusive in the process. This wan’t an isolated incident; I see it every day when I’m in town. Society owes these fuckers nothing. Yet they take take take. It could well be what I hate most about Dublin, the place I’ve always called home.
Their attitude and abusiveness really pissed me off. Their perrenial freeloading even moreso. The bus driver didn’t deserve that kind of hassle while going about his job. But most of all I felt sorry for the six year old boy.
