WE ALL NEED a rubber stamp like this, every now and again…

Let’s face it, life rarely goes exactly to plan. If it isn’t your work getting in the way of you actually, you know, living… then it’s your lifestyle getting in the way of you doing anything useful. Unless of course you are one of those very lucky few people who have found themselves doing exactly what they want.

Me? I’m not in that club. I’m in the same boat most of the rest of the western world is in right now. Working too hard to barely keep ahead of the next crisis and trying to keep my head above water without loosing the will to live. It’s difficult and it sometimes seems like an endless list of problems and shit just waiting to hit you… but I have discovered a fool proof way of dealing with the stress.

It’s called a ‘Fuck It!” rubber stamp, and everyone should get one. Immediately!

Next time you run into a problem that you just can’t be arsed solving, simply rubber stamp it with a nice crisp “FUCK IT!” and then forget about it!

This approach works extremely well on ‘to do’ lists, emails, work requests and requisitions, invoices, wedding invitations, bus tickets, handouts people try to give you in the street, expensive receipts, ex-girlfriends,annoying neighbours, nuns, visa bills, monthly reports, traffic wardens, project plans, whining children, invalid lotto tickets, door to door salespeople, out of date milk, lists of any kind whatsoever, inlaws, recruitment agents, missed opportunities and in fact most problems of any nature at all that you can think of.

Try it. I think you will agree it delivers instant satisfaction and a kind of stress-release everyone needs at some point.

I dare you!

IT’S A YEAR I’d rather forget, and if I could throw some petrol on it and light a match I would, yet looking forward into 2009 is like standing on the edge of an deep abyss.

It started out so differently and I can remember this time last year being full of hope for the future, where as now I realise I was just operating on bad instincts and false promises at the time. I had thought 2008 was going to bring a measure of personal and professional success, but instead it delivered betrayal, bad judgement and seemingly endless trials.

I write this article not to divulge the details or to bitch and moan for no good reason, rather I commit these words to posterity so that I will not forget, so that I will mark this occasion and remember well the hard lessons learned this year as we all face into an uncertain future in 2009.

The global economy has faltered and crashed, the banks are in disarray requiring bail out packages from governments. The outlook in pretty bleak with over 50% of surveyed companies indicating that they are shedding staff in order to cope with rising costs and falling revenues. Everywhere you look it’s getting tougher, and I suspect it will be like this for a couple of years at least before any semblance of balance is restored. I’m lucky enough to still at least have a job, but I have no illusions about that either. Everything is pretty fragile heading into 2009.

And so, when I consider what could have been, and how differently the past year might have been if things had worked out as originally planned and promised, well I think I would just prefer to douse the entire thing in petrol and throw a burning match over my shoulder upon it as I turn my back on the year once and for all.

Although the burning pyre that was 2008 was a disaster for me I know it was a great year for others and to those lucky individuals I wish them continued success and good fortune. In the great balancing scales of our existence some must go up while others fall further; it is inevitable and rightly so. Good needs bad, success is defined in contrast only to failure. Let this brief post serve as a reminder so that - if I am lucky enough to still be here in one year and find myself looking back at 2009 – I can compare and contrast this low ebb, this point in time. Who knows, maybe the scales will have balanced back in my favour this time next year, or perhaps I’m only at the start of the slide downwards.

Enough said. Christmas is upon us. Whichever shared delusion religion you subscribe to I wish you a safe and happy break from the usual rat race. Enjoy the time with family and friends if possible.

Me? I’m going to warm my hands on the burning pyre that was 2008

ONCE AGAIN it seems Ireland is leading the race to the bottom of the pile when it comes to the provision of quality broadband services.

According to a survey carried out recently Irish broadband subscribers are only getting an average of 60% of the advertised services. Of course they are paying for 100% of the service, but are getting shafted by their suppliers and only receiving the lower quality / slower speeds instead. Irish mobile broadband users don’t fare out much better either, receiving an average of only 64% of their advertised services.

The report by Ireland Internet Performance Index, published by Epitiro, a technology provider that installs software agents in networks to measure performance, found that Dublin came seventh out of eight cities in Europe for broadband quality. The testing by Epitiro focused on the cities of Limerick, Dublin, Galway and Cork, and ISPs (internet service providers) were not forewarned of the mystery shopping exercise

It’s even worse news if – like me – you are a gamer. Most of us would agree that sub-100ms ping times are required in order to play effectively online, and sub-50ms ping times are desireable if competing online. Unfortunately the same survey found out that most of us are only getting an average of 190+ms ping times. Not one single ISP was capable of delivering sub-100ms ping times. How fucked up is that?

For over a decade Eircon managed to  hold up the development and deployment of a proper broadband infrastruture in this country, not to mention stifling any competition, and now that we have both (technically speaking) it still seems impossible to get any sort of a decent service from the ISPs here.

I don’t know if it’s down to bad provisioning or bad management but at the end of the day the result is the same. We continue to get shafted and pay higher than average prices for a crap service.

PICTURE THIS, a passenger goes mental on a flight and the air crew have to do something before it gets out of control. The answer? Why Duct Tape of course…

Maria Esther Castillo of Oswego, N.Y., was due in court today, charged with resisting arrest and interfering with the operations of a flight crew aboard United Airlines Flight 645, from Puerto Rico to Chicago. It seems she went a bit ‘off her rocker’; slapping air crew on the ass, grabbing at other passengers and even managing to somehow fall on a blind guy in his seat.

Faced with an out-of-control passenger the clever air crew resorted to some trusty duct tape because ankle cuffs apparently kept slipping off Castillo, so the flight crew and two passengers were forced to use duct tape to keep her in her seat. Cool eh? Can you just imagine the scene as the feds boarded the plane to take custody of the offending passenger once it finally landed?

Still – it’s hardly surprising that air rage is on the increase. Violence in general is on the up all across the world, and it’s starting at a very early age. Earlier than even I expected. Recently published statistics in the UK show that More than 1,500 children aged four and under were suspended from schools in the past year. Want to guess what the chief offence was?

Yup. You guessed it.  580 five-year-olds, 300 four-year-olds and 120 three-year-olds were given fixed-term exclusions for attacking another pupils. Suspensions happen every year, but this is the first year that the government has given a breakdown of the reasons for suspensions among various ages of primary school children and that’s why the results are so shocking. If children are behaving like this at that age, what chance do they stand of making it through adolescence to adulthood in one piece?

It’s pretty insane when you think about it, but I guess the trusty duct tape could come in handy for the kids as well right? Hmm… I can think of a few handy uses to keep ‘em quite and confine them to their seats. That would certainly restore a bit of order. Throw in a few custom made objects of torture, maybe the odd paedophile or a religious wingnut or two and you’ve got yourself a perfect christian brother atmosphere of learning through the discipline of pure terror. That’ll certainly restore some order in the classrooms. Hell it worked for me so why not everyone else?

Actually – thinking back now I’m glad we didn’t have any access to duct tape back then. It was hairy enough when we got our hands on the chemistry sets and labs, I can’t imagine the chaos that could have ensued if we’d managed to get creative with duct tape as well. Hmmmmm. Messy.

So – perhaps we should start kids off on the right track. Get that duct tape discipline up and running before their first birthday and you won’t have any issues with them in later life. Strap ‘em up on the walls when they give you any grief

IN RECENT years it has been three foot high Darth Vadars and six feet high “school girls”, so what do you think my chances are this Halloween of something different?

Yup… exactly what I was thinking too. None. Nada. Zip. 

Once the usual round of Spidermen, Batmen, Ghouls and Zombies have gone (let’s call this the first wave) the volume dies down a bit but the age group goes up. It seems to me that once the first wave, usually escorted by parents, passes by your door there is a lull of sorts until the second wave kicks in, and this is when it usually gets a bit weird, and believe me some costumes at Halloween are very very weird.

Last year I can distinctly recall opening the door to two six foot high females in what I can only describe as school girl costumes. What this has to do with Halloween is beyond me. I’ve no idea what age they were, but kids they were not. Maybe they were hookers on a local fundraising tour, who knows.

The point is in recent years the second wave of callers tends to be older, more risque and certainly weirder. But unfortunately with weird does not come inventive or even sexy. Not usually anyway.

So listen up Universe… If you want to make my Halloween special this year, then how about taking note of that photo above and having one of them call to my door looking for a trick or treat, well let’s be honest it’s going to be more of a treat isn’t it?

IF EVER we needed proof of the huge divide between the haves and the have nots in America just take a look at what Nieman Marcus will be selling next month…

All over America this week most people are probably worrying about the value of their dollar; some people are wondering if they will still have their house next month, others are wondering if they will even have a job next week. All around them their carefully constructed infomercially safe homespun world is crashing down in a whirlwind of financial disasters and broken political promises. It’s pretty much all doom and gloom no matter where they look and the outlook going forward isn’t getting much better.

Unless of course they happen to be looking at the items soon to be on sale from Nieman Marcus as announced today.

Fancy a custom golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus in your backyard in time for Christmas? It’s a steal at only $1M. Got $110,00 to spare? Then all you have to do is decide between shooting some hoops with the Harlem Globetrotters or purchasing a carbon fibre motorbike that will hurl you down the road at 190 mph.

Still, if you find yourself a little pushed for cash in these troubled times you can still get a bargain basement option. Fancy seeing a life size replica of yourself in Lego? No problem – it will only set you back about $60,000.

I’m sure there will be queues around the block for these items when they go on sale in the next month; let’s just hope the prospective purchases don’t have to walk past any of those unsightly homeless folks.

TRUST, like respect, is meant to be earned, not just given. These days trust is a rare commodity. We never trusted lawyers or politicians, but there used to be lots of other folks we could trust… but what about now? Who do you actually trust these days?
Think about it. In the good old days there were always certain people or professions that our parents taught us to place absolute faith trust in. These were typically the upstanding citizens or groups within our communities that seemed to be above it all, beyond question and utterly good… and therefore trustworthy. Times however have changed dramatically in the last few decades and all those old stable go-to people or professions seemed to have changed with them.

Trust me, I’m a Priest: There was a time, certainly when I was growing up here in Ireland, that you everyone looked to their priest to solve almost all problems. The priest was one of the most trustworthy individuals within the community, but not any more. Child abuse and sex scandals have seen to that. These days the very last thing most people want their children doing is going anywhere near a priest.

Trust me, I’m a Doctor: Doctors used to be the gods who walked upon the earth; our problem solvers, our aspiration (for all good families wanted a doctor in their ranks) and our advisors. These days however all we hear about is malpractice lawsuits, misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis (the recent cancer scares are enough to convice me the system is fucked completely!), super-bugs in the hospitals themselves and, well, the list goes on and on. Now days the very last place you want to be when you’re sick is a hospital.

Trust me, I’m a Pilot: The smart uniforms, smarter IQ (than most of us, required to fly the planes) and of course the superior attitude used to set these folks apart from the rest of us, but now they have been relegated to the status of bus drivers. Most planes can take off and land themselves and the pilots are only there for emergencies.. but the growing list of pilot errors and drunken pilots doesn’t exactly imbue the profession with a lot of confidence, although they do still have statistics on their side, given the number of flilghts taken every day.

Trust me, I’m a Banker: Time was this was the solid profession all mothers wanted their sons to get into. Long stable careers with plenty of money and huge social standing within the community. Now though they are seen as basically greedy crooks who can’t manage a business. Just look at the amount of banks going to the wall these days, the financial markets meltdown around the globe and the national bail outs required to keep these bankers in business. Would you trust your banker these days? Didn’t think so.

Trust me, I’m a Cop: I know it was a long time ago, but there was a time when cops were treated with respect because the community saw them as staunch upright protectors, paragons of virtue and upholders of the law. That view of course has changed a lot as a result of decades of corruption and racism. Time was when a person wouldn’t think twice about asking a cop for directions, but in some parts of the world you are just as likely to get beaten up for approaching one.

So I guess the big question is.. who do you trust these days? Who can you trust these days?

Things have changed so dramatically around our world that the old faithfuls have been washed away in a torrent of scandals, court cases and tribunals.

So I ask you, who do you trust these days?

IF I WAS TO ASK you how you liked your food, the chances are you might say ‘hot’, but these days you might also say naked or even blindfolded because dining has gone all kinky and shows no sign of returning to normal anytime soon.

It’s probably fair to say it all started with the Japanese and specifically with the dining experience known as Nyotaimori (Body Sushi). This form of dining is a service allowing restaurant customers to eat from the skin of a naked woman. Apart from her crotch, which is usually covered with some kind of garnish, the model’s modesty depends on the (temporary) position of the food on her body.  As a phenomenon, this kinky method of downing your raw fish received a lot of media attention in the West back in the 1990s but the reality is that such practices are rate in Japan and usually reserved for the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia).

In fairness when I was in Japan there a few years ago I didn’t find any of these establishments, but if I had come across one of these sushi joints with the naked women I’d probably have been tempted to check it out, although I’m not sure SusiQ would have shared my enthusiasm

Of course, not wishing to be outdone, the West responded in recent years with blindfold dining, also known as ‘dark dining’ The concept here is that all kinds of sensory provoking foods are served to completely blindfolded dining guests. In theory the blindness heightens other senses (like smell, taste, touch) thereby increasing the sensory experience and pleasure of eating the food in the first place. There are even some places who will cater for wedding parties in this manner. Go figure!

More recently again, and in New York in particular, the trend has now turned towards naked dining, where the only ones in the joint who are dressed are in fact the serving staff. All guests are required to be completely naked while dining. On the plus side I guess there is nowhere for anyone to stuck their mobile phones so at least your dining experience would be an quiet one.

As if that wasn’t whacky enough how about attending a dinner party on a frame hanging from a crane, suspended 150m above the ground? You think I’m kidding… check out the photo on the left there and think again. This is yet another direction for diners to consider, known as extreme dining, where the food is served in, well, extreme circumstances.

I love my food and in fairness I’m not above a bit of kinky now and then, but I do have to wonder what’s next for diners in this growing trend towards the extreme. It’s as if we’ve all become bored with a normal existance and now must seek pleasure in dark and dangerous places because we’re afraid that if we don’t do something extreme we will just fade away into the background, like everyone else.

Just how extreme does dining need to be I wonder?

IT TAKES A LOT to get me excited about things, unless of course I’m really pissed off at something, in which case you can measure the time from normal to apocalyptic in terms of nanoseconds and the trail of dead or dying bodies in my wake is usually a bit of a giveaway too… anyway I’ve just seen a bunch of photos from the Google Zurich office and I’m now officially jealous.

Actually I think it’s worse than that. Ah hell it’s much worse if I’m honest. I’m now lthinking about where I currently work, and the various outfits / offices I’ve worked in for the last – well lets just say “few decades” – and I’m beginning to realise that I’m way beyond jealous. Yup I’m actually really really pissed off.

Seriously folks, have you actually seen these offices? It’s like someone read my mind about the perfect place to work. It looks so perfect they probably don’t have a HR department or any accountants clogging up the place and bringing all the creative people down… but then again that would be too perfect wouldn’t it?

Just look at the few photos I’ve managed to glean from the ‘Net below and tell me you’re not completely jealous and now considering a career change… or at the very least that you’re not also considering going ‘postal’ on your current office in response to the way the ‘other half’ work/live.

 

Just look at the attention to detail for all the worker bees. I mean if I had a slidy thingy leading to the canteen I’d actually want to go there instead of normally trying to avoid the slow death that is lunchtime. Hell the reception looks so good I’d probably just stay there most of the day, although the lure of that fish tank room is almost too much to handle.

Dammit – how the hell am I going to go back to work on Monday knowing what a shithole we’re all working in by comparison to Google. I’m guessing the Google Dublin offices aren’t like this… but it might be worth a little shufty around just in case

SAINT PATRICK may have driven the snakes from Ireland all those years ago, but we’ve still got our fair share of slippery characters here these days, and worse we still have a fair amount of stupid ones too. Although, to be fair, almost the entire government has abandoned Ireland to celebrate Paddy’s Day abroad somewhere, leaving only Willie O’Dea to hold the fort – so that takes care of the slippery lot, leaving us with just the stupid buggers instead.

Oh yes, it’s that time of the year when the death count on the roads rises beyond comprehension, every single time, and we count the cost in the newspapers and draw comparisons like some morbid league table, lamenting the decline of social and family values and then, as usual, everyone goes back to work and gets busy enough to not give a crap until next year.

The headlines, the blood and the bones, the grieving families and the mashed cares all fade back into the black and white print of the newspapers and gradually morph into last weeks tragedy, last months statistic and next years league table reference for comparison. And life goes on, for some of us anyway, but not those unfortunate enough to be caught up in the carnage .

I’m no angel it has to be said, if anything I’m a fairly flawed person with lots of history and baggage. In the eighties I was certainly drinking and driving, and so was everyone else… but times changed and so did I. What was acceptable then is not now, and that’s a good thing. I’m also no fan of the ‘nanny state’, this endless erosion of civil liberties that seems to be taking place here in Ireland these days, and I’m certainly not an advocate of this privatisation of speed cameras and the inevitable revenue cash cow it will generate as a result. But…

Ah yes, there is a “but”.

But, having said all that I have to recognise that it really is pure stupidity to drink and then get into a car and drive. And given the statistics for an average Paddy’s Day weekend and the resulting road deaths that will potentially happen… well, let’s just say by all means enjoy your Paddy’s Day, get drunk, get drugged, hell I don’t care what you do… but please do not get in a car while pissed or drugged.

Or at the very least if you do intend drinking and driving this Paddy’s Day, how about you kill yourself quietly somewhere on some back road without endangering anyone else?

It’s the least you can do.