That Would Be Excrement of a Bovine Persuasion

Bullshit is everywhere. To be polite we call it spin but everyone knows it’s bullshit and it’s inescapable. And pointless.

This morning when I went to the end of the road to retrieve the emptied bin, there was a letter attached. The first paragraph is as follows, verbatim including inexplicable capitals.

“In Today’s society, public awareness of the problems of waste is increasing and as your Environmental partner, Oxigen welcomes this as an opportunity to help build a more sustainable society and in turn reduce our carbon footprint. To assist with this, both bins (waste and recycling) will be collected together on a fortnightly basis in dual chamber collection vehicles”

What this should say is as follows;

“An analysis of our accounts has revealed that we are not making as much money as we would like to on your route and need to slash as much cost as we possibly can regardless of the impact on our customers and employees. To assist with this, both bins (waste and recycling) will be collected together on a fortnightly basis in dual chamber collection vehicles”.

Any kind of spin is hard to take but bad spin, absolute shite of the level of that paragraph is baffling. Do they think the children of the house are going to be the only ones reading this? Did it not cross their minds that this masterpiece might find its way into the hands of the odd mentally competent adult?

A senior functionary in this organization signed off on this tripe. It probably went through a few drafts until it was deemed to be sufficiently repugnant and insulting to our intelligence before the approved stamp was produced.

I’ve said it before; there ain’t no troika gonna save us now.

The Late Late

The superfluousness of The Late Late Show has been pointed out by practically everybody recently. But it was novel to see Tubridy and the show’s very own producers underline its irrelevance on the series premiere last night.

Straight out of the blocks came our Olympic boxing team in full training regalia, medals around necks. And for the next toe curling twenty minutes Tubridy tried to re light that fire, tried to corral a horse that had bolted a month ago.

There are some out there who probably think he made a decent fist of it. It is for these that The Late Late Show is allowed to trundle on.

There are some who think it was pointless trying to rekindle the buzz in the first place, who were appalled to see the great Ross Noble go down like a lead balloon while a piss poor medley from a pride of Eurovisionites was greeted with demented hysteria. It is for these that The Late Late Show should be given a lethal injection.

It’s the humane thing to do.

X. Rated.

Anything of value is predicated on a good idea. We have talked before about the toxic culture of the X Factor. The X Factor is supposedly about discovering talent. But discovering talent and discovering someone who will do exactly what you tell them to do are very different things. It is the latter that our friends at the X Factor are interested in.

They have no interest in discovering talent as you or I might recognize it; in the sense of someone having the vision and ideas to deliver something interesting and worthwhile.This is an intrinsic part of what you or I would call talent. But what the X Factor is trying to unearth is the opposite of this, the opposite of talent. What they are trying to unearth is a meek (X Factor translation “ambitious”) personality with a voice who will never disagree with them on anything.

Nick Cave is one of the most talented people in human history, he wouldn’t get through the first audition. Him and his pesky songwriting genius, and his humour, and his deep artistic convictions and his big ideas. Sure where would he be going.

Polithicks

It used to be that an engagement with politics was the sign of an alert, active mind, of a certain type of intelligence. But now, after all that we’ve seen, if you’re still reading editorials, if you’re still reading your Marc Colemans or your Fionnan Sheehans or your John Drennans and if you’re still posting comments on thejournal.ie then I’m sorry to say that you are a bona fide eejit.

On the radio the other day Pat Leahy said that it will be interesting to see the opinion polls around the time of the upcoming local elections. Yes Pat it will be interesting. To four people; yourself, John Drennan, Marc Coleman and Fionnan Sheehan. The people whose livelihoods depend upon the propagation of this turgid shite.

The rest of us will be too busy with season three of The Walking Dead, season five of Breaking Bad, the Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, Magners League and Heineken Cup. Amongst other things.

Criminal Careers

Oh RTE and their little procedural idiosyncrasies, especially when it comes to courts coverage. We have spoken here before about the phenomenon RTE created whereby the victim of a crime can only be named “locally”. Slotting in alongside that one is the insistence on giving us the occupation of the individual in the dock. The defendant is invariably unemployed when violence is involved. It is deemed important that we know this, probably to help us develop a more rounded impression of the squalor that attends this person’s existence.     

Ronan Collins

Ronan Collins played Crocodile Shoes by Jimmy Nail on his lunchtime Radio 1 show the other day. At the end of the song he referred to various collaborators Nail has had over the years. He mentioned Paddy McAloon. This is why despite some of the extremely dodgy stuff he plays Ronan Collins is still one of the good guys. Why does someone who has heard of and is familiar with the body of work of Paddy McAloon have to give up a full five minutes of his already short daily show to allow (a) Joe Duffy to summarise the storm of hysterical bullshit he expects to whip up in the day’s Liveline and (b) the news to be read in Irish for the four listeners out there who might be able to distinguish it from Latvian. Time to put the foot down Ronan, you’re better than that.   

Tenacious D

Sit back and enjoy El Presidente emptying both barrels into right wing arsehole Michael Graham. I can't imagine Sean Gallagher doing this, can you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5OWRRJh-PI&feature=player_embedded