Cúpla Focail: Bull agus Shit

I read with interest recently that Leo Varadkar is going to do all he can to improve his Irish; he would like to have more Irish.

Leo seems to believe that there is not enough bullshit in his life, that he could always accommodate a bit more. Leo thrives on bullshit to the point that wandering the halls of Leinster House all day every day is not exposing him to quite enough of the stuff.

Leo says this is all fine and well but take me to the source, the fountain, the spiritual home of this thing we call bullshit. Take me to the place that all other bullshit regimens around the world call Daddy. Take me to, take me to……… the gaeltacht. That's right, the gaeltacht.

The gaeltacht is where he is headed next summer to put his tolerance to the most severe of tests. Someone like Leo might think there is no level of bullshit that he cannot withstand but I don’t think he is aware of how much the gaeltacht ups the ante in this area.

This is a place whose sole raison d’être is the production of bullshit. It’s a vocation, a calling; these people are professionals. Leo may think Dáil Éireann gives him the edge but he is really stepping into the lion’s den here.

You haven’t seen bullshit until you’ve attempted to discuss European fishing quotas as gaeilge standing on a rocky outcrop in Mayo with a fella who insists upon being addressed as Aodhránichaneann mic Breathnachainnaidhgohiontach.

To which we say to Leo, good luck with that shit.

I on the other hand am doing all I can to have the Irish in my head removed in order to make room for something useful like Canadian recruitment agency phone numbers and last weekend’s Premiership results.

There is a gap in the market here for a hypnotherapist or some such similar practitioner, to remove all the remnants of an Gaeilge and the attendant bad memories and trauma from our collective consciousness. To clear the way for a full life, free from bullshit. Free at last.

Or as free as any man, whose name is not Leo Varadkar, can be.

Good News, Bad News. What's The Difference?

Let's talk about the standard and tone of newsreaders, we have touched on it before. A few days ago I listened to a bulletin on a national radio station. The two lead items; the deaths of three members of a Co. Down family in a farming accident and the discovery of the body of an eleven year old girl in a house in Tullamore were delivered in the chirpy manner you would expect for coverage of the birth of a baby panda at Dublin Zoo. No attempt was made to make the delivery appropriate to the subject matter. Shocking stuff.

Management Theory

An extract from Dion Fanning in last week's Sunday Independent on Scottish football managers:

"Scotland and Ireland have many similarities. We are wedded together by a complex relationship with drink and England but Ireland has never managed to produce the great managers that were rolled out in Scotland.

Some say the Scottish accent provides its own authority whereas the Irish accent, to English ears, is associated with the arrival of a fun activity like all-night drinking or even all-day drinking.

The response, "I just love your accent", is all very well and can often be turned to our advantage, but it slightly undermines the point if you've just told the listener they're a worthless piece of shit who will never play for the club again.

Perhaps this is why Michael O' Leary irritates English people so much. As soon as they hear his voice, some involuntary neural reflex has them thinking, "I just love your accent", before they register that he, or one of his proxies, is telling them that they owe him £745 for a packet of Skittles."

Give Her The Holly

I read with interest today of someone who was fined €400.00 for flashing his lights to warn oncoming drivers of a speed camera.

So despite all the protestations by Gardaí and local authorities that the sole purpose of these cameras is road safety does this not amount to a straight admission that it is in fact revenue generation?

If the motivation is a genuine desire to reduce speed was this citizen not providing invaluable help in this regard, should he not have been commended rather than fined? Seemingly not.

King Chicken

There was a woman on the radio today who has just written a book entitled “Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That”. She is an advocate of the gallery system as an effective means of bringing worthwhile pieces of art to the attention of the public.

She made the point that it is people in the know, the artistic community, people who have studied art, curators etc. who decide what makes it into galleries in the first place. So a filter has already been applied before what we would call “the public” get to see it. Which of course begs the eternal question; what is art and more pertinently who decides?

The same scenario applies when it comes to fashion. You’ve often heard it said of someone that they have style or taste or a great sense of fashion based on the clothes that they wear. Clothes that were inevitably purchased in a shop. Clothes that were chosen for that shop by a buyer in an office in London or New York or Paris. At least one filter has already been applied. It's the same story with furniture.

We think we like certain art, clothes or furniture but the decision has been made for us behind closed doors. 

I wrote a poem yesterday on the back of my bus ticket about a chicken that survives the nuclear holocaust. By my reckoning that’s art. But you will never see it so by our friend's logic it is not art any more, it ceases to be art when it doesn't attract an audience.

According to her any One Direction song you care to choose has more artistic merit than post apocalyptic poultry poetry.

That can't be right. 

Pat's High Hat

The Energy Regulator was on Pat Kenny this morning. In response to a case put to him by Pat wherein a person uses €3.00 of electricity per month but is obliged to pay a bill of €40.00 per month The Regulator treated us to a delightful yarn about hidden costs and some heretofore unheard of arrangement whereby the ESB are still paying for wires that were installed decades ago, the costs for which are being “paid back on average over time”.

This is the standard, this is where we’re at. The position of Energy Regulator, a big job, and a job that would definitely fall into the big swinging mickey category has attracted the caliber of person who will go on national radio and utter a sentence containing the words “paid back on average over time”.

Fr. Spud Murphy, my third year Maths teacher, had a well calibrated bullshit radar and when faced with an obfuscating student would simply nod and say “Yes, indeed and what’s the difference between a duck?”

It would be nice to see the eminent current affairs presenter of the national broadcaster deploy similar techniques when faced with something of the order of “paid back on average over time”.

Instead of some verbose comment designed solely to illustrate that he knows more about the subject at hand than the guest how about  “What’s the difference between a duck?”

I, for one, won’t live to see it; they have each other’s backs, these guys.

Just The One

Overheard on Portlaoise to Dublin bus Saturday afternoon;
"Did you have a drink last night Becky?"
"I'd a bottle of wine that's all"