Animosity Towards Verbosity

I just heard someone on the radio say “We trust each other implicitly” Is it necessary in this instance to use the word implicitly? Is the presence of the word implicitly not implicit in the use of the word trust, with all that it represents. It is implicit - therefore by my reckoning it does not actually need to be there. So why put it in? And why stop there? How often have you heard someone say “things got progressively better”? If things got better is it not implicit that this represented a progression? It would have to be considered by its very nature to be progressive, what with things getting better and all. So why put it in? Because we are in the throes of a collective love affair with superfluousness. We are merely acting out, verbalizing a deep rooted bullshit instinct. We can help it no more than we can keep our hands in our pockets when we trip over a kerb.

Sometimes It's Hard To Be A Man

So it’s a debate that surfaces from time to time, who has it easier men or women? Women of course have to periodically endure the undoubted inconvenience of childbirth but stop to take a look at the pressure men put themselves under just going about their everyday lives. They have to keep up with current affairs, big deal you might say so do women. But then take a look at all the extra curricular stuff men are obliged to take on. They have to know all about the latest Tamil Tigers offensive in Sri Lanka, keep abreast of the MP expense scandal in Westminster, keep an eye on Obama’s progress in Washington AND do the research necessary in order to arrive at a fairly good idea as to how many Group One winners Johnny Murtagh is going to ride this season. They have to know whether Wolves have a realistic chance of surviving in the top flight next year, they have to have considered, insightful opinions on the Cork hurling dispute, they need to be able to recognize whether or not Leinster are sufficiently competitive at the breakdown this season, and so on. As if that were not a demanding enough workload, they also have to keep themselves apprised of what far flung car manufacturers are doing. She comes home and says “Oh I think I saw Seamus in town” and you respond “It might have been him, what kind of car was he driving?” and she says “Oh I’m fairly sure it was green”. Men just can’t get away with such sloppiness. A man’s answer to that question would have to contain at a minimum details such as it was a 1999 Peugeot 306 Meridian five door 1.8 diesel. That kind of knowledge doesn’t come easily you know, concentration, graft and dedication are required to hone those skills. I could be mistaken but women appear to have rather shrewdly and deliberately limited their extra curricular specialist areas to shoes and handbags. That’s an extremely narrow field. At which subject do you think you would stand a better chance of success with on Mastermind - the history of shoes and handbags or the history of sport and the automobile. Exactly. Men have been their typical passive selves and not bagged something with a bit less homework. It's too late now, we can't co opt longer eye lash techniques or soap opera gossip for ourselves at this stage. They're spoken for. Do you know how long I had to spend reading the sports section last Sunday in order to ensure I don’t make a fool of myself in company next weekend. A long time let me assure you. There’s only so many faux pas you can make in the realm of footwear and shoulder accessories, you just know what you like. Sport is a different matter entirely. It’s very easy to make that fatal verbal slip and indefinitely alienate yourself from male peers by being inadequately equipped with knowledge of Wigan’s offside trap. Well I've had enough of the pressure, I think I need a gender reassignment.

I Was Just Following Hors D'oeuvres

Gordon Ramsay has illustrated an important modern truth – anything can be shouted or sworn into the public consciousness. Up to recently nobody I know gave a flying fuck about food or how its preparation must accord with some grand unwritten code of sophistication. But we are all by now obscenely familiar with the darkest practitioner of this very dark art Gordon Ramsay. It goes to show that our priorities will eventually align with those of anyone who wears a uniform, is granted plenty of air time, appears to have very little patience and communicates constantly in a raised voice. What will he have us doing next I wonder, because God knows we’re willing. Just say the word Gordon.

Thank You But Please Come Again

I have often been hopelessly lost and stopped someone to ask for directions only to then blatantly not listen to a word they say. There appears to be some impulse within the brain that creates interference the moment your respondent begins to speak. You helplessly and unconsciously become swamped with an avalanche of erroneous data. The person’s lips stop moving, you mutter “thank you” but you know you are every bit as helpless as you were ninety seconds previously. What is the etiquette in this situation? I mean is it polite to say "Sorry buddy could you run that by me again my head involuntarily became submerged in a montage of the top ten Champions League goals followed by a five minute chunk of dialogue from Entourage. Honestly I’ll listen this time, next left was it?"

Kid A. X Tractor.

Summer is departing and with it goes that unique Irish tradition of thirteen year old boys in county jerseys driving tractors the size of houses on country roads. Is the inverse of normal licensing requirements at work when it comes to tractors, I mean do you have to be under sixteen to drive one nowadays? Evidently there are random Department of Transport spot checks to make sure that when pulling a Titanic sized load down a pot holed boreen that you have to be disfigured by acne and flooring it. Are you at risk of having your license revoked if found driving one of these beasts while employing a modicum of road sense or in possession of anything which has been manufactured by the Gillette corporation? “It’s out of my hands Paudie, you were pulling twenty eight round bales and you slowed down coming into that hairpin bend, it contravenes everything we stand for. You’ll have to sit on top of the unsecured load for a few years till you get a bit of sense. One day you’ll thank me for this”

Charity Begins Elsewhere

Tube Tied

When you’re channel surfing late at night what exactly do you need to come upon to make you stop? How good does something have to be to prevent you from going around the complete circuit for the fourteenth time in as many minutes? You would think that when you happen upon the Interpol set from the Reading Festival or a previously unseen interview with Che Guevara in his dying moments or a Ken Burns documentary on the faking of the moon landings that you would drop the remote and settle down. But no, the lunacy continues unabated until you have tutted yourself into a hysterical frenzy over the paucity of quality programming on telly these days. That BBC is nothing but repeats, Channel Four is Big Brother on a loop, RTE is far too parochial and Sky Sports is an extra fifty quid a month and they can stick that right up their arse. Besides what would I do with my hands if I decided to actually watch something? The Rubik cube is surely not manufactured anymore, I can’t smoke in the house and I can’t see myself taking up knitting or embroidery. What’s on? Oh I know what’s on, it’s what else is on that concerns me. I want to find something decent so I can completely ignore it and in so doing authenticate my quest by upgrading my expectations while simultaneously guaranteeing my ultimate disappointment. I want to up the ante in the self fulfilling prophesy of misery. Better to travel than arrive, Patsy.