Some Hallowe'en Fun
31/10/08 22:11 Filed in: General
Nonsense
Nice bit of viral
marketing by The Cliff House Hotel
in Ardmore, Co
Waterford. Take out your frustrations on the
Budget, the recession and the “We told you so”
economists, in an interactive zombie-shooting
game.
Enter your top score to win an overnight stay at
The Cliff House. Competition closes on 9 November.
(Disclaimer: The company I work for is a supplier to The Cliff House Hotel, and I am the salesman who looks after their account. That fact notwithstanding, it really is a great place to spend a night or two.)
(Disclaimer: The company I work for is a supplier to The Cliff House Hotel, and I am the salesman who looks after their account. That fact notwithstanding, it really is a great place to spend a night or two.)
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How Wingnuts Interpret Polls
27/10/08 22:03 Filed in: General
Nonsense | Politics
Take
this poll: Gallup Poll
Daily tracking from Friday
through Sunday finds Barack Obama with a five
percentage point lead over John McCain, 50% to
45%, in the presidential preferences of likely
voters using Gallup's traditional model.
Look further down, and you’ll find that the margin of error is +/- 2%. So that means that in reality, Obama is no more than 1% ahead of McCain, which is in itself within the margin of error. And that’s before the Bradley Effect is taken into account. Go McCain!!
Believe it or not, Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report makes a living peddling this sort of crap.
Look further down, and you’ll find that the margin of error is +/- 2%. So that means that in reality, Obama is no more than 1% ahead of McCain, which is in itself within the margin of error. And that’s before the Bradley Effect is taken into account. Go McCain!!
Believe it or not, Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report makes a living peddling this sort of crap.
Abbeyleix Again
24/10/08 22:34 Filed in: General
Nonsense
A while back I
published a guide to the Unofficial Abbeyleix
Bypass.
This being Jazz Weekend, I feel I should draw your
attention to it again in case you missed it first
time round.
What I didn’t do back in July was detail the northbound route. I have now rectified this.
I travelled the N8 to Cork on Wednesday last and there were roadworks north of Abbeyleix and also in Durrow. I hope to Jaysus that these have been suspended. We’re off to Cork in the morning.
If you haven’t travelled the route for a while, be aware that the M8 from Cashel to Mitchelstown is now open, and it is the biz. We can now do Portarlington to Cork in two hours fifteen minutes without breaking sweat.
Have a great Bank Holiday Weekend.
What I didn’t do back in July was detail the northbound route. I have now rectified this.
I travelled the N8 to Cork on Wednesday last and there were roadworks north of Abbeyleix and also in Durrow. I hope to Jaysus that these have been suspended. We’re off to Cork in the morning.
If you haven’t travelled the route for a while, be aware that the M8 from Cashel to Mitchelstown is now open, and it is the biz. We can now do Portarlington to Cork in two hours fifteen minutes without breaking sweat.
Have a great Bank Holiday Weekend.
Revisiting London
21/10/08 21:33 Filed in: Personal
Earlier this year, I
started a new job with a company that does business
both in Ireland and the UK. As a result, I have been
back and forth to London several times this year.
I’m very fond of London, as I lived almost all of my twenties there, so going back every now and then is no hardship. But could I ever live there again? Not a chance!
London is a great place to live when you are in your twenties. It’s fast, it’s exciting, and it goes on 24/7. If you’re young, foot-loose and fancy-free, you’ll never be bored in London because there is always something happening. It is often described as an impersonal place, where people would rather die than talk to the person sitting next to them on the tube, or make eye contact with the person sitting opposite. But it’s the sort of place where you will find a great sense of community at a local level. I used to run an off-licence in Leadenhall Market in the City, and it seemed that everyone knew everyone else there. Yet in the evening, you would walk out of the market, into the throng of commuters and you were anonymous again.
For the first couple of years of my time in London, like many young Irish people in the 80s, I worked in pubs. Most of the other staff were transient as well, and at any one time, it was like being in the United Nations, except we were pulling pints instead of preventing wars. Friendships were intense and brief, and people were always coming and going. Needless to say, I have lost touch with almost everyone I worked with during those times, though I exchange e-mails once or twice a year with a couple of old colleagues.
As I make my way through London these days, I see throngs of early-twenty-somethings on the tube or walking down the streets with their iPod headphones glued to their ears. Twenty years ago that was me, except that my hearing was being irreparably damaged by a Sony Walkman.
I’m still quite nifty at finding my way around by tube, but the volume of people and the pace at which they move is quite daunting if you haven’t been used to it for a while. Trying to cross a stream of pedestrians is like trying to cross a busy street. Once I was buying a tube ticket from a machine at Victoria, and as I was foostering for the change in my pocket, the machine unilaterally cancelled the transaction, as I was taking too long. I felt old.
But the main reason I could not live there again is because I could never imagine bringing up kids there. It’s just too big, and there isn’t enough open space to allow kids to run around without being paranoid about who’s watching them.
So the situation as it stands now is about right. I get my short hit of London every now and then, enough to bring back pleasant memories of the days when I was a Londoner myself, but with the satisfaction that I’m not stuck there.
This is one of the songs that was ever present on the mix-tapes I used to play on my Walkman - Lullaby of London by The Pogues.
I’m very fond of London, as I lived almost all of my twenties there, so going back every now and then is no hardship. But could I ever live there again? Not a chance!
London is a great place to live when you are in your twenties. It’s fast, it’s exciting, and it goes on 24/7. If you’re young, foot-loose and fancy-free, you’ll never be bored in London because there is always something happening. It is often described as an impersonal place, where people would rather die than talk to the person sitting next to them on the tube, or make eye contact with the person sitting opposite. But it’s the sort of place where you will find a great sense of community at a local level. I used to run an off-licence in Leadenhall Market in the City, and it seemed that everyone knew everyone else there. Yet in the evening, you would walk out of the market, into the throng of commuters and you were anonymous again.
For the first couple of years of my time in London, like many young Irish people in the 80s, I worked in pubs. Most of the other staff were transient as well, and at any one time, it was like being in the United Nations, except we were pulling pints instead of preventing wars. Friendships were intense and brief, and people were always coming and going. Needless to say, I have lost touch with almost everyone I worked with during those times, though I exchange e-mails once or twice a year with a couple of old colleagues.
As I make my way through London these days, I see throngs of early-twenty-somethings on the tube or walking down the streets with their iPod headphones glued to their ears. Twenty years ago that was me, except that my hearing was being irreparably damaged by a Sony Walkman.
I’m still quite nifty at finding my way around by tube, but the volume of people and the pace at which they move is quite daunting if you haven’t been used to it for a while. Trying to cross a stream of pedestrians is like trying to cross a busy street. Once I was buying a tube ticket from a machine at Victoria, and as I was foostering for the change in my pocket, the machine unilaterally cancelled the transaction, as I was taking too long. I felt old.
But the main reason I could not live there again is because I could never imagine bringing up kids there. It’s just too big, and there isn’t enough open space to allow kids to run around without being paranoid about who’s watching them.
So the situation as it stands now is about right. I get my short hit of London every now and then, enough to bring back pleasant memories of the days when I was a Londoner myself, but with the satisfaction that I’m not stuck there.
This is one of the songs that was ever present on the mix-tapes I used to play on my Walkman - Lullaby of London by The Pogues.
Just Asking, Like…
21/10/08 21:25 Filed in: General
Nonsense
It's The Economy, Stupid
16/10/08 22:09 Filed in: Politics
Paddy Power have already paid out on Obama.
This may well be a bit early to call the whole thing. If a week is a long time in politics, three weeks is three times a long time. Anything can still happen. The Republicans will throw as much shit as possible at Obama in the hope that some of it will stick, and some of it just might. Osama bin Laden might appear in a new video wearing an “Osama 4 Obama ‘08” t-shirt.
The issue exercising Middle America these days is not that Obama once stood next to some former 60s radical in a mens’ room in Chicago, exchanging small talk while they both took a piss. People are afraid that they will lose their jobs, their homes and their savings, and will elect the guy most likely to assuage that fear. At the moment, that guy is Barack Obama, who has appeared the more presidential of the two candidates.
Eight years of President Stupidhead W. Idiot has left the USA in a terrible mess. Mired in two seemingly impossible wars, and with a failing economy and a huge budget deficit, it is a huge ask for any single person to sort it out. But can you imagine if a year into a McCain presidency, he becomes incapacitated and Hockey Mom has to take over? It doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Here’s an interesting snippet from the New York Times (Yes, I know. Part of the latte-sippin’, gun-controllin’, creationism-suppressin’, abortion-promotin’, troops-not-supportin’, tax-raisin’, terrorist-appeasin’ East-coast liberal media elite.) If you invested $10,000 in the S&P stock market index in the periods under either Democratic or Republican presidents exclusively since 1929, your investment would have been six times better off under Democrats than Republicans. And that excludes Hoover’s Depression presidency. If you include Hoover, you would have made nearly 30 times the gains under Democrat presidents. [Spotted at Daring Fireball, where John Gruber commented “Facts continue to hold a liberal bias.”]
Your Duty Unto The State
16/10/08 20:56 Filed in: Food &
Drink
Enough outrage and
indignation about the Budget has been aired on the
blogosphere without me going on about it too, but
there is one element of it that I feel I should
raise.
In recent years, the so-called “old reliables” (booze, tobacco, petrol) haven’t been hit as hard as usual in the budget. During the boom years, inflation was always ready to raise its ugly head, and it was felt that too much of an increase in excise duty would stoke it. The ciggies would get hit every now and then on health grounds, and spirits got whacked with a big increase about five years ago, again as a result of social concerns about excessive drinking.
Wine escaped an increase in duty for twelve years, but that run came to an end on Tuesday, when Brian Lenihan added 50 cents (including VAT) to a standard bottle of wine. Other wine styles (fortified, sparkling, etc.) have been increased pro-rata. Taking VAT out of it for now, this adds 41c onto the pre-budget duty rate of €2.05, an increase of 25%-ish.
This is going to cause problems for a number of small to medium sized wine importers and distributors, who are already feeling the pinch because of the credit crunch. This sector relies heavily on availability of credit from banks, simply because it is obliged to offer credit facilities to its own customers. Any new dispensation that upsets this sector’s credit limits will cause big problems for the viability of several small businesses, and as a result hundreds of jobs.
Whenever a consignment of wine arrives in Ireland from abroad, the importer must do one of two things. They can pay the excise duty up front (along with the VAT on the invoiced cost of the wine), or they can divert the shipment to a bonded warehouse. They can leave the wine there for as long as they like, but once they release it from bond, the duty and VAT become payable. Most importers avail of a facility called duty deferment, where they pay their duty and VAT to the Revenue on a 30-day-end-of-month basis. To avail of this, they have to apply for a limit to the amount of duty they are allowed per month, and the Revenue require a guarantee from the importer’s bank that not only can this be honoured, but that double that value can be honoured. So if an importer had a duty deferment limit of €100k per month, they would have to be able to show that they were able to pay €200k if need be. If they exceed the €100k during the month, any extra duty would have to be paid up front, or else the importer could lodge a prepayment with the Revenue.
This is where the problem arises. Importers are now going to have to go to their banks to renegotiate their overdrafts to cover the 25% increase in their duty deferment limit. Given the mood of the banks these days, this will not be easy. If they can’t get that extra credit from the bank, they will either have to scale back their business, or reduce the credit terms they offer their customers. Whatever way they go about it, they are cornered. I think that this will lead to several smaller operators going out of business in the next six months.
The other implication of the increase in duty is the loss of business due to cross-border shopping. Excise duty in the UK is £1.46 (€1.88), and VAT is 17.5%. In the Republic of Ireland the equivalent rates are €2.46 (£1.92) and 21.5% (from 1 December). Draw a line from Dublin to Sligo, and every wine retailer in the Republic north of that line will have to compete with that. Sainsbury’s in Newry is already the single biggest retail outlet of alcohol in the UK and on the island of Ireland. It’s about to have an even bigger bumper Christmas than normal.
In recent years, the so-called “old reliables” (booze, tobacco, petrol) haven’t been hit as hard as usual in the budget. During the boom years, inflation was always ready to raise its ugly head, and it was felt that too much of an increase in excise duty would stoke it. The ciggies would get hit every now and then on health grounds, and spirits got whacked with a big increase about five years ago, again as a result of social concerns about excessive drinking.
Wine escaped an increase in duty for twelve years, but that run came to an end on Tuesday, when Brian Lenihan added 50 cents (including VAT) to a standard bottle of wine. Other wine styles (fortified, sparkling, etc.) have been increased pro-rata. Taking VAT out of it for now, this adds 41c onto the pre-budget duty rate of €2.05, an increase of 25%-ish.
This is going to cause problems for a number of small to medium sized wine importers and distributors, who are already feeling the pinch because of the credit crunch. This sector relies heavily on availability of credit from banks, simply because it is obliged to offer credit facilities to its own customers. Any new dispensation that upsets this sector’s credit limits will cause big problems for the viability of several small businesses, and as a result hundreds of jobs.
Whenever a consignment of wine arrives in Ireland from abroad, the importer must do one of two things. They can pay the excise duty up front (along with the VAT on the invoiced cost of the wine), or they can divert the shipment to a bonded warehouse. They can leave the wine there for as long as they like, but once they release it from bond, the duty and VAT become payable. Most importers avail of a facility called duty deferment, where they pay their duty and VAT to the Revenue on a 30-day-end-of-month basis. To avail of this, they have to apply for a limit to the amount of duty they are allowed per month, and the Revenue require a guarantee from the importer’s bank that not only can this be honoured, but that double that value can be honoured. So if an importer had a duty deferment limit of €100k per month, they would have to be able to show that they were able to pay €200k if need be. If they exceed the €100k during the month, any extra duty would have to be paid up front, or else the importer could lodge a prepayment with the Revenue.
This is where the problem arises. Importers are now going to have to go to their banks to renegotiate their overdrafts to cover the 25% increase in their duty deferment limit. Given the mood of the banks these days, this will not be easy. If they can’t get that extra credit from the bank, they will either have to scale back their business, or reduce the credit terms they offer their customers. Whatever way they go about it, they are cornered. I think that this will lead to several smaller operators going out of business in the next six months.
The other implication of the increase in duty is the loss of business due to cross-border shopping. Excise duty in the UK is £1.46 (€1.88), and VAT is 17.5%. In the Republic of Ireland the equivalent rates are €2.46 (£1.92) and 21.5% (from 1 December). Draw a line from Dublin to Sligo, and every wine retailer in the Republic north of that line will have to compete with that. Sainsbury’s in Newry is already the single biggest retail outlet of alcohol in the UK and on the island of Ireland. It’s about to have an even bigger bumper Christmas than normal.
Scary People
09/10/08 22:30 Filed in: Politics
Yup. Osama - I mean
Obama (heh!) - is a terrorist alright. It’s his name,
see.
[via 23/6]
Also, read this from Bock
[via 23/6]
Also, read this from Bock
Heineken Cup 2008/09
09/10/08 21:11 Filed in: Sport
Tomorrow night sees the
return of European Rugby’s premier club/province
tournament - the Heineken Cup. Now in its fourteenth season,
it has had its ups and downs. I was at the 2003
final between Toulouse and Perpignan in a
half-empty Lansdowne Road. At the end of the 2007
season, the French and English clubs were
threatening to pull out of the competition
altogether, which would have doomed it.
But the downs are nothing compared to the ups. The quality of the rugby on display is awesome. The rivalries are intense. This is a very competitive tournament, and of all the teams taking part at least half of them could be touted as potential winners. All-Ireland Hurling Championship it ain’t. And of course, Munster are the current champions, and have won it twice.
From this Munster fan’s point of view, the Heineken Cup is very special. Only in the Heineken Cup has a team I actively support actually won something meaningful.
Apart from the
wins in 2006 and 2008, who can forget that amazing
match against Gloucester in 2003? Or the semi-final
against Leinster in 2006? Or Rob Henderson of Munster
running through Austin Healy of Leicester in 2003? On
the flip side, there was the agony of losing to Wasps
in the semi of 2004, a game cited by many as one of
the finest games of rugby ever played. The
Back-Hander that robbed us in the final of 2002. John
O’Neill’s perfectly good try being disallowed in the
semi against Stade in 2001 (the day after my
wedding.)
Having won the tournament twice, Munster are now one of the most feared sides in Europe. Since 1995, they have been beaten only once at Thomond Park. They have qualified for the quarter-final stage for ten seasons on the trot, contesting four finals (winning twice) and seven semis along the way. This year they have a new head coach and have had a good start to the Magners League with five wins from five. Alongside their many veterans, they have some really exciting talent coming through the ranks, most notably Keith Earls. In addition, there appears to be genuine strength in depth in key positions.
As champions, Munster are also the team that everyone will want to beat, so you can be sure that every match will be high-octane stuff. Munster didn’t like very much losing their 100% record at Thomond Park to Leicester in 2007, and will be keen to re-establish their newly-revamped home as the impregnable fortress it once was. Like last season, Munster are again in a tough group. Last season, they won all their home matches, picking up a bonus point against Clermont, and denying all three visitors the opportunity to pick up losing bonus points. On the road, they beat the Scarlets, and picked up losing bonus points at Clermont and Wasps. They will need to emulate that performance if they hope to get to their eleventh successive quarter-final.
Their pool opponents this season are Clermont, Sale and debutants Montauban. Tomorrow’s match is against the newbies at home. It should be a comfortable win, hopefully with a bonus point for good measure, but to borrow a cliché from the round-ball game, it is a potential banana skin. Montauban are an unknown quantity and have nothing to lose coming to Thomond. An even mildly complacent Munster could have difficulty putting them to the sword, but I don’t believe that this will happen. Munster don’t do complacency, and the team selection for tomorrow night shows that Tony McGahan is taking the opposition seriously.
Elsewhere, Leinster find themselves with their perennial nemesis, Edinburgh, as well as Wasps and Castres. If they can get over their Murrayfield hoodoo this weekend, then they will have a good chance of qualifying from the group. If they don’t (and remember that they are coming off the back of two Magners League defeats to Munster and Connacht), they are sunk.
In Pool Four, Ulster are in with Stade, the Scarlets and Harlequins. The group page on the Heineken Cup website lists the four clubs alphabetically in the table with no games played. By virtue of the initial letter in their name, Ulster are bottom of the table. Expect them to stay there. They shouldn’t even be in the competition and have their place by virtue of being only marginally less useless than Connacht were last season.
I will know in the morning if I am going to be making the journey down the N7 tomorrow afternoon. Me old mucker Munstermad (who used to be one of the contributors at The Fear of God) texted me this evening to tell me that he might be able to get his hands on a spare ticket.
Here’s hoping.
But the downs are nothing compared to the ups. The quality of the rugby on display is awesome. The rivalries are intense. This is a very competitive tournament, and of all the teams taking part at least half of them could be touted as potential winners. All-Ireland Hurling Championship it ain’t. And of course, Munster are the current champions, and have won it twice.
From this Munster fan’s point of view, the Heineken Cup is very special. Only in the Heineken Cup has a team I actively support actually won something meaningful.
Having won the tournament twice, Munster are now one of the most feared sides in Europe. Since 1995, they have been beaten only once at Thomond Park. They have qualified for the quarter-final stage for ten seasons on the trot, contesting four finals (winning twice) and seven semis along the way. This year they have a new head coach and have had a good start to the Magners League with five wins from five. Alongside their many veterans, they have some really exciting talent coming through the ranks, most notably Keith Earls. In addition, there appears to be genuine strength in depth in key positions.
As champions, Munster are also the team that everyone will want to beat, so you can be sure that every match will be high-octane stuff. Munster didn’t like very much losing their 100% record at Thomond Park to Leicester in 2007, and will be keen to re-establish their newly-revamped home as the impregnable fortress it once was. Like last season, Munster are again in a tough group. Last season, they won all their home matches, picking up a bonus point against Clermont, and denying all three visitors the opportunity to pick up losing bonus points. On the road, they beat the Scarlets, and picked up losing bonus points at Clermont and Wasps. They will need to emulate that performance if they hope to get to their eleventh successive quarter-final.
Their pool opponents this season are Clermont, Sale and debutants Montauban. Tomorrow’s match is against the newbies at home. It should be a comfortable win, hopefully with a bonus point for good measure, but to borrow a cliché from the round-ball game, it is a potential banana skin. Montauban are an unknown quantity and have nothing to lose coming to Thomond. An even mildly complacent Munster could have difficulty putting them to the sword, but I don’t believe that this will happen. Munster don’t do complacency, and the team selection for tomorrow night shows that Tony McGahan is taking the opposition seriously.
Elsewhere, Leinster find themselves with their perennial nemesis, Edinburgh, as well as Wasps and Castres. If they can get over their Murrayfield hoodoo this weekend, then they will have a good chance of qualifying from the group. If they don’t (and remember that they are coming off the back of two Magners League defeats to Munster and Connacht), they are sunk.
In Pool Four, Ulster are in with Stade, the Scarlets and Harlequins. The group page on the Heineken Cup website lists the four clubs alphabetically in the table with no games played. By virtue of the initial letter in their name, Ulster are bottom of the table. Expect them to stay there. They shouldn’t even be in the competition and have their place by virtue of being only marginally less useless than Connacht were last season.
I will know in the morning if I am going to be making the journey down the N7 tomorrow afternoon. Me old mucker Munstermad (who used to be one of the contributors at The Fear of God) texted me this evening to tell me that he might be able to get his hands on a spare ticket.
Here’s hoping.
On Twenty's Retirement
02/10/08 22:22 Filed in: Blogging
So, out of the
blue, Twenty Major has folded up his tent and
sneaked off into the night.
I suppose it was inevitable that the day would come, and it’s best that Twenty should quit blogging while he was still on top of his game. (Unlike, say U2, who should have split years ago and haven’t made a decent album in 21 years.)
I think it would
be fair to say that 20M was Ireland’s first blogging
celebrity. By that I mean he was the first blogger
that achieved a degree of fame, not just within the
blogging community, but also on the wider media
scene. (Hmmm… Celebrity Blogger, now there’s another
one of those
ideas.)
There are other Irish bloggers that have a huge
readership, like Mulley or Arseblogger, but the unique nature of
Twenty’s blog made it stand out from the crowd. Go
back into the early archives and you’ll find a lot
of the ”Do you know what I think is
funny/strange/fucked up…” type of posts that a lot
of Irish blogs start with, but it soon became
clear that he was defining a style for himself. It
wasn’t long before the stock of characters like
Stinking Pete, Ron, Dirty Dave and Jimmy the
Bollix had become fully formed. (Incidentally, I
have often wondered of Jimmy’s name came about as
a result of The Commitments. During auditions for
the band, Jimmy Rabbitte meets Joey Fagan, who
introduces himself as “Joey ‘The Lips’ Fagan”, to
which Jimmy replies “And I’m Jimmy ‘The Bollix’
Rabbitte.” )
What was clear from the start was that Twenty couldn’t give a shite about what anybody thought of what he wrote. In that sense, he was probably one of the first Irish bloggers to completely understand the freedom that the blogging platform gave to a writer. He could swear, rant, abuse or rail against whatever he wanted, safe in the knowledge that his alter ego separated the guy at the keyboard from his readership. So far so good, but what made Twenty stand out from the crowd was the fact that he is a very, very good writer. It’s easy to start a blog up and start calling all and sundry a bunch of cunts, but you need a certain style or panache to blog like Twenty did.
For three years on the trot, Twenty Major won best blog at the Irish Blog Awards. He did this because he kept his standards up. I remember remarking before that it must be a serious effort to come up with something original and worthwhile to post every day. But that’s what he did. That’s not to say that everything he wrote was brilliant - you simply can’t come up with a masterpiece every day of the week. Most of his posts were definitely worth reading to the end, and among them were works of absolute genius.
Some people didn’t get him, and others didn’t care too much for all the swearing. But for those of us who did appreciate his style and humour, Twenty was a vital voice, and one who wasn’t afraid to forego the laughs and have a go at the great and the good of society, as he did in his open letter to Bertie Ahern in May 2006.
Every now and then, there would appear a rather long short story, if you see what I mean. As it unfolded, characters would be developed beautifully, and the narrative would follow a logical path. But you knew what was coming - the most groan-inducing pun imaginable, usually based on the title of a hit song from the 1980s. Like this one. Or indeed this one.
It came as no surprise really when 20M got his book deal. (I offered to do the artwork for the cover, but sadly someone had beaten me to it.)
So best of luck in your retirement, Twenty. It only remains for me to move your link from my Blogroll page to the Resting page. No doubt the lads in Ron’s will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, now that they know their every exploit won’t end up on your blog to be read by a sad bunch of cunts like us.
I suppose it was inevitable that the day would come, and it’s best that Twenty should quit blogging while he was still on top of his game. (Unlike, say U2, who should have split years ago and haven’t made a decent album in 21 years.)
What was clear from the start was that Twenty couldn’t give a shite about what anybody thought of what he wrote. In that sense, he was probably one of the first Irish bloggers to completely understand the freedom that the blogging platform gave to a writer. He could swear, rant, abuse or rail against whatever he wanted, safe in the knowledge that his alter ego separated the guy at the keyboard from his readership. So far so good, but what made Twenty stand out from the crowd was the fact that he is a very, very good writer. It’s easy to start a blog up and start calling all and sundry a bunch of cunts, but you need a certain style or panache to blog like Twenty did.
For three years on the trot, Twenty Major won best blog at the Irish Blog Awards. He did this because he kept his standards up. I remember remarking before that it must be a serious effort to come up with something original and worthwhile to post every day. But that’s what he did. That’s not to say that everything he wrote was brilliant - you simply can’t come up with a masterpiece every day of the week. Most of his posts were definitely worth reading to the end, and among them were works of absolute genius.
Some people didn’t get him, and others didn’t care too much for all the swearing. But for those of us who did appreciate his style and humour, Twenty was a vital voice, and one who wasn’t afraid to forego the laughs and have a go at the great and the good of society, as he did in his open letter to Bertie Ahern in May 2006.
Every now and then, there would appear a rather long short story, if you see what I mean. As it unfolded, characters would be developed beautifully, and the narrative would follow a logical path. But you knew what was coming - the most groan-inducing pun imaginable, usually based on the title of a hit song from the 1980s. Like this one. Or indeed this one.
It came as no surprise really when 20M got his book deal. (I offered to do the artwork for the cover, but sadly someone had beaten me to it.)
So best of luck in your retirement, Twenty. It only remains for me to move your link from my Blogroll page to the Resting page. No doubt the lads in Ron’s will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, now that they know their every exploit won’t end up on your blog to be read by a sad bunch of cunts like us.
Search Like It's 2001
01/10/08 07:43 Filed in: Tech
To mark their 10th
birthday, Google have published a special search page
that allows you to
search the January 2001 index.
Go back in time and you’ll find this fresh-faced young fellow, or this exciting digital device, or this online encyclopedia thingie.
It’s only going to be up for another couple of weeks, though.
(Spotted on DF)
Go back in time and you’ll find this fresh-faced young fellow, or this exciting digital device, or this online encyclopedia thingie.
It’s only going to be up for another couple of weeks, though.
(Spotted on DF)