Work? Why the hell would anyone do that?

I’m away for a week tomorrow on a work related matter. There will be planes involved. I hate that. Not so much for the planes but for the airport business, but needs must.

Anyhoo it was exactly those needs that left me giddy with spluttered rage when I read the following this morning.

How in marmalade is this allowed to go on?

“Patrick Dooley was then called to give evidence, under oath, about his means.

He told the judge that he had three accounts; in Bank of Ireland, AIB Bank and Killarney Credit Union.

However, there were no funds in any of his accounts.

His mortgage is paid up to date with the assistance of the Social Welfare contribution of €1,000 a month.

Stating that the defendant was costing the State approximately €570 per week, the judge referred to the help the defendant was receiving for his mortgage: “This is paid for by the taxpayer; €250 a week. You have a mortgage of €300,000 and the taxpayer pays for this. This is a great little country isn’t it.”

He added: “I fail to see why you can’t be in the same boat as everyone else”.
The same boat? Which boat would this be? My boat involves having to work for every penny. His boat appears to be a luxury liner with twin engines and a free captain. Without being too rabidly Daily Mail about it all, why would this guy bother his hole working? How did he get a mortgage in the first place? Why are we paying for his three hundred thousand house and his newish van?

I’m so sick of cute hoorism, be it from people like this guy to the TDs farting up over travel expenses, the ‘I’m all right Jack’ bollocks that we, you and me are paying for! Well I don’t want to pay for this guy’s house and van, or his kid’s food. I don’t want to pay for senator’s made up phone bills. I am so utterly sick of the corrupt nature of people.  And I hate airports.

Social Welfare was supposed to help those in times of need, not be a bloody prop for a layabout. I hope this judge throws the bloody book at him. * Doesn’t hold breath*

The curious incident of the rat in the night.

Because I have owned the bigger of the cats for well over a decade now I am hip to his nefarious ways. Thus the moment I heard his strangled ‘burwop’ yesterday I reacted with cat-like reflexes of my own and slammed the office door shut. Moments later he appeared at the glass with a rather large rat dangling from his maw.

‘Go away!” I shrieked I said calmly.

And after a withering look he did, tossing the dead rat onto the patio and removing himself to the neighbours who I am sure he feels appreciate him more.  I tried to ignore the corpse, but it kept laying there, so armed with a dust pan and brush I went out and deposited said rodent into the pink leaves bin and returned to my desk. TBOFC then returned from his wanderings, removed it again and left it outside the garage door when I almost trod on it when I went to feed the cats later.

The paramour and I looked down upon the dead rat.

‘Take a picture,’ I said. But alas it was too dark for the old iphone to capture raticuss deathicuss in all his glory.

We left it there and went to Ranelagh. This morning I went to release the cats only to discover the blasted rat has gone missing again.

‘This is most curious.’ I said to Puddy, who sniffed the spot.  I know my lot didn’t take it. So I can only conclude his brethren came for their fallen comrade in the dead of night and took him away for a Christian Burial.

Oh Ratty, we hardly knew ye.

Ginger Day is upon us. And it’s right grim today.

A number of things occurred to me earlier today.

Reeces Pieces are an excellent breakfast.

Getting older is fucking tiresome.

I do not like it when people I care about are down in the dumps.

The list of things I need to ‘work on’ in training appears to be getting longer and NOT shorter as I had hoped.

James Spader was a beautiful looking man in his younger days.

Now he looks not unlike my mother.

This ties in neatly with getting older being tiresome.

I still cannot do a handstand push up. This ties in with the LONG list of things I find I need to work on.

I could still be hungry.

Happy Arthur’s Day!

To Martha! To llamas! To pyjamas! To NAMAS! To bananas! To drink! To forgetting this is not an anniversary but a cute hoor marketing ploy to get Irish people to drink their sorrows away. Hurrah! It works for An Taoiseach it will work for you! Drink, drink, feck gurrls, arse! Lap it up, play the fiddle Burn ‘em all Ralph.

Just because I am so grumpy,  I will watch the following once again.

We are just getting fatter.

According to some survey on Newstalk obesity is costing us 1.6billion a year. ‘From our head to out toes’ a lady intoned most seriously, suggesting that we are royally screwed by fat, our own fat and everyone else’s fat.  The same survey says 23% of adults in Ireland are now clinically obese and 40% are overweight. It then went on to say a lack of exercise is behind this alarming expansion, something I have doubts about. Food would be the real culprit, I imagine. Specifically our reliance on carbs for every meal. We like to eat, us lot. Who doesn’t? But what we like to eat is highly questionable.

Fact is, if you eat badly -unless you’re a Phelpsian swimmer- you just can out-train a poor diet. And the food pyramid- that stupid chart stuck up in schools and doctors offices the country over is a huge factor is our rising fat. I mean just look at the stupid thing. Carb loading encouraged by the bulk! Do we really need to rely so heavily on bread and pasta and spuds and processed crap like cereal? We do not, and yet that’s what this thing is encouraging.  40 percent of our population is over weight, surely that tells us something, no? Does it not tell us that what we are eating is doing us harm? That our health is taking a bit of a pounding?

Is it not time for a new government backed information drive to educate people on what eating  healthier actually entails?  I know you can’t make people eat a certain way, that would be folly. but start with the basics surely. Processed foods area an absolute minefield of salts, sugars, preservatives, additives and junk carbs. Eliminate them and you’ve got more of a chance of eating well and controlling what you put in your body. We need to start looking at our reliance on starchy foods like potatoes and bread. We don’t need them and they really don’t do us any favours. Now I love toast and mash, but even I’ve come to accept-grudgingly- that I need to minimise my intake. It’s not particularly hard, although it does require a bit of a tweak in eating habits.

What do you think? Are we doomed to grow wider or can we halt the spread? What do yu think we should be doing differently?

Vomit.

My body has saved me from my own stupidity more than once. And it saved me again last night from most likely food poisoning. Cod, on the cusp I’d wager. I went to bed lay there for a while feeling slightly unwell with the word ‘fish fish fish fish…’ going around and around in my head until I had no choice but to haul my ass up and head to the bathroom, whereupon I vomited once, twice, thrice until it was done. Then I immediately felt better and went back to bed and fell asleep.

Hurrah for my emergency stop belly. Nothing from my dinner was digested, nada, not a morsel. Such is the efficiency of my interior break system. Too much hooch? Up it comes. Slightly iffy paella? Up. Dodgy cream? Up. Too many jellies? Up.  Without fail.

I have to say I don’t like vomiting though, and because of that I am in a grouch today. But I’d rather be in a grouch than half poisoned.

Meanwhile the Cowengate waffle rumbles ever on. Oh Big B, if only your bellah could have saved you from your indulgences as handily as mine does me. No one would be any the wiser.

This ginger day is brought to you by a non-nazi.

( stick a cork in it, we’re done)
Jeepers, the dress wearing pontiff of the roman catholic church really likes to rile folk up some, don’t he? Atheists, like me, got a good old tarring and feathering when he conflated a non belief in god with the inherent ability to slaughter millions of innocent people on the grounds of religion, poverty and sexual orientation. Unchecked by woo, the non believer is clearly a hell of a threat to the world at large.
From The Telegraph.
The 83 year-old Pope, who was forced to join the Hitler Youth during the Second World War, praised Britain’s efforts in fighting a “Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society”, and went on: “As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a ‘reductive vision of the person and his destiny’.”

It has been a been a queer sort of week all round, between science ministers promoting anti-science books, then not, and slurring leaders singing into the small hours, I feel like I’m in the middle of a show and any moment someone will leap out of the shadows and yell ‘Candid Camera’ or something.
I for one am most glad this is Ginger day. I’m hoping next week will be better. Have  good weekend. I’ll try not to eat any babies, or intern people in concentration camps  over the weekend. Promise!

Our Politicians are corrupt blubbering congested trolls, but they haven’t tried to ban masturbation. Yet.

It’s a long winded title I know, but I was so taken aback with reading about Christine O’Donnell, American politician, that it was all I could think of.

Masturbation is adultry. Actually -”"It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be be abstinent alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery, so you can’t masturbate without lust.”

I just can’t fathom how anyone can vote into a position of power a person who would say such a thing.  It boggles what is left of the bits of my mind that were boggled by yesterday’s news that the Irish Government spent 43 million (!) of OUR money on plots of over priced and disused land for decentralisation.  I keep thinking of good that money could have done. I am floundering here. I’m starting to think those people who build homes in the middle of nowhere, dig wells and set up generators and live entirely off the land, while being heavily armed in case of intruders, have the right idea.

How can we trust anyone to do the right thing any more? How can we be so royally screwed by power hungry idiots? Look, LOOK the evidence is clear, corrupt, insane, prudish, lying, entitled, shysters wiggle their way to the top the world over.

And we let them.

Cowen, congestion. Rome is really burning.

‘At least Boris Yeltsin had the good sense to stay on the plane’ – somebody on twitter.

What a to-do yesterday.‘Gargle-gate’ kicked off with a slurred morning interview, a misquote,and a Fine Gael tweet (“Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney tweeted that Brian Cowen “sounded half-way between drunk and hungover”, a claim the Solpadine swirling Taoiseach called a “new low in Irish politics”).
By lunch time an outraged Mammy O’Rourke was ballyhooing about who all over news talk and an equally snarky Dermot Ahern was defending the leader’s ‘letting his hair down’ with a quick ashure aren’t we entitled, defence.
( there’s that work again!)
By golly, the airwaves were lit up. Folk crawled out fo the woodwork to point fingers left and right, the great Irish tradition of drinking and telling stories divided the nation. Meanwhile the reputation of Ireland being a nation of drunken buffoons took another buttress as the flames around us rose higher.
Ursula Halligan, a ginger no less, part Brunhilda, part Jack Russell, was on the case, doorsteppin’ the beleaguered spitting image puppet with an on the ropes snap.
Drunk or hungover? There was no other option given.
Congested! came the rallying cry.
‘I did not have sex with that women!’ I heard in my head, before wandering off to find out just why a creationist thinks aliens built New Grange. The stupid fucker.
Whether Brian Cowen had ‘congestion’ or not, it remains that our glorious was up singing, doing impressions and hooching it up until after 3am in the morning, knowing he had interviews before nine o’clock the following morning. Don’t know about you hepcats, but if I have a big interview in the morning I try to be prepared and get a good night’s sleep, and I’m not even running the country.
But then that’s just me.
This country is circling the drain.

Is Connor Lenihan really that hard up for cash?

Riddle me this batmen and barwomen. Why would Conor Lenihan, minister for science, launch an anti-evolution book, written by a non scientist?