Thursday, April 24, 2008

Thou Shalt Always try to go to good gigs...

...if you have the time, money and interest I suppose.

The good people at the Limerick Post dropped a copy of their paper in our letterbox today. It informed me that there are three gigs over the coming weeks that I might like to go out and see. Feel free to come along if you want to too.

1. Dan le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip
Friday 9th May at 9.00pm
Seomraí na Trionóide, Cathair Luimnigh.

They brought us "Thou Shalt Always Kill" last year, which enjoyed a spell as my bebo flashbox a few months back, after I saw same on the page of one Will Storan, who has an ear for decent music if I may say so. Which brings me to the whole reason for me creating this post: the chance to put the video for "Thou Shalt Always Kill" on my blog.

More info should be on the Trinity Rooms' website. Incidentally, I'm really fond of the track that plays when you open their site. Does anyone know what it's called?

They come from the same Essex town that Joseph "Heart of Darkness" Conrad once lived in. This brings me nicely to the main reason I have for posting this evening, basically to try and embed a youtube music vidjo into my blog for the very first time. Here goes, ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Thou Shalt Always Kill" by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip:


2. Utah Saints
Saturday 3rd May also at 9.00pm
And also at the Trinity Rooms, Limerick.

The lads from the days of X-Worx jeans, Petro Motion jeans and grafitti stating the equation "XTC=NRG" will hopefully have a great set, 1992 style.

3. Rufus Wainwright
Sunday 8th of June at 8.00pm
University Concert Hall

The Montreal Minstrel of Misery brings his show to UL, should be good. I'm sure there's a lot more to him than that - I have one cousin and had one taxi-driver who were mad into him, so I'm sure with a bit of pre-concert homework I should be able to form an opinion on him.

Surprise Sur-Bloody-Prise

It appears that the first results of the recount have gone to Robert Mugabe.


Suppose Martyn Turner was spot on, as he often is, when he sketched this cartoon a few weeks ago:




Speaking of inflation, here's a bit of trivia:

Zimbabwe currently has an inflation rate of 150,000%, but this is moderate compared to historical figures. For example in Hungary at the end of the Second World War, inflation was 41,900,000,000,000,000% which meant that prices doubled every 15 hours...

(E-mail received from Bolger, D., 26 February 2008).

Sunday, April 20, 2008

What I learnt today

Michael O'Leary has some Neck. I didn't learn that today, that fact has been in the public domain for long enough. However I did learn about what he did in the wake of the Aer Lingus flights for a fiver fiasco, courtesy of this snippet from Sue Denham/pseudonym in today's Sunday Times:

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary couldn't wait to dump on Aer Lingus when it was forced to do a PR u-turn and honour the bookings of customers who had taken advantage of a pricing error to buy €5 tickets to New York. O'Leary dispatched a flight crew to Dublin airport carrying placards reading "champers for unhappy campers" to hand out flutes of champagne to passengers waiting to board an Aer Lingus flight. Unamused Aer Lingus staff called airport security who ordered Ryanair's photographer to delete all images as it breached Aer Lingus's copyright. Spoilsports.

Would have loved to see the photos. Just goes to show that the company who have brought us this:


... and who last August put this on their homepage to protest the introduction of strict anti-terror procedures:


...and who this February had to pay damages to Monsieur et Madame Sarkozy for this:


... have not changed one jot. Interestingly the Advertising Standards Authority dismissed complaints about the Martin McGuinness ad - topical humour was allowed to be topical humour.

Thanks to larryni.me.uk for the images.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Sympathy for the Duvel

Bernard Werber is a French science fiction writer. He used to be a journalist. According to Wikipedia, son œuvre fait se rencontrer mythologie, spiritualité, philosophie, science-fiction, biologie, futurologie, logique ainsi que des données scientifiques peu connues.

Some of his books take the form of mini-encyclopaedae (is that the plural? how am I to know?), where he basically just takes a rake of random enough topics (but usually in some way connected with mythologie, spiritualité, philosophie, science-fiction, biologie, futurologie or logique) and writes articles on said topics. Not necessarily definitions, just articles/essays that are in some way linked to them.

In L'Encyclopédie du Savoir Relativ et Absolu, this is what he had to say about Solidarité, and I'd happen to think that he is pretty much spot on in what he says:

Solidarité

La solidarité nait de la douleur et non de la joie. On se sent plus proche de quelqu'un qui a subi avec vous une épreuve pénible que de quelqu'un qui a partagé avec vous un moment heureux.

Le malheur est source de solidarité et d'union alors que le bonheur divise. Pourquoi? Parce que, lors d'un triomphe commun, chacun se sent lesé par rapport a son propre mérité. Chacun s'imagine etre l'unique auteur d'une commune réussite.

Combien de familles se sont divisées a l'heure d'un héritage? Combien de groupes de rock and roll ont pu rester soudés malgré leur succes? Combien de mouvements politiques ont éclaté, le pouvoir pris? Étymologiquement, le mot sympathie provient d'ailleurs du grec sumpatheia qui signifie souffrir avec. De Meme compassion est issu du latin compassio signifiant lui aussi souffrir avec.

C'est en imaginant la souffrance des martyrs de son groupe de référence qu'on peut un instant quitter son insupportable individualité. C'est dans le souvenir d'un calvaire vécu en commun que résident la force et la cohésion d'un groupe.

With a bit of copying and pasting and Google Translating what we get is this:

Solidarity

Solidarity is born of pain rather than joy. You feel closer to someone who has been with you a painful ordeal as someone who has shared with you a happy event.

The tragedy is a source of solidarity and unity while happiness divides. Why? Because, in a triumph, everyone feels compared lesé has its own deserved. Everyone imagines to be the sole author of a common success.

How many families were divided at the time of an inheritance? How many groups of rock and roll have been able to remain united despite their success? How many political movements have erupted, the power taken? Etymologically, the word sympathy also comes from the Greek meaning sumpatheia which means to suffer with. Similarily, compassion comes from the Latin compassio, which also means to suffer with.

In imagining the suffering of the martyrs of the reference group for a moment that we can leave her unbearable individuality. It is in the memory of the suffering endured in common than residents of force and cohesion of a group.
Wise words, je pense.

Running


A sport of no great skill. Just plain hard work, from what I can see.

Why I like The Economist


For a while now I have subscribed to The Economist. There are numerous reasons why. In this post I will attempt to outline some of them.

  • Its highly divisive, yet eloquently expressed opinions.
  • The fact that it consistently refers to itself as "this newspaper", and does so in the third person.
  • The random one-off articles it contains, such as the state that picture-book publishing is in at this moment in the UK, how the poker world is becoming more dominated by youngsters who have only ever played internet poker, or the trials faced by Native Americans who want to go into business in Native American nations in the US of A. In other words, the kind of articles that you won't really find elsewhere, yet if you met someone who had a particular interest in whatever topic was the focus of the article, you would be able to hold a 10-15 minute rational conversation on said topic with the aforementioned someone.
  • The fact that they rarely use words like aformentioned.
  • And the fact that most of their articles concerning actual economics go way over my head.
  • Their blatant anti-EU bias, at times.
  • The photos they choose, and the captions therewith. An example: in an article a while back on declining suicide rates in the UK, they featured a picture of some cliffs. The caption: "Not seeing much action lately."
  • The ads. Either in the recruitment section: "You will be qualified to a PhD level and have up to 10 years experience managing some ridiculously high-level other people at some really high level in another organisation so why you would want to bother seeking a job in the recruitment section of a magazine is beyond most people. The other ads, that just presume the entire readership is made up of top-level executives who wouldn't know what to fly economy was if it hit them in the face. A tad ironic that, given the fact that it's called The Economist.
  • The fact that the Middle East is lumped in with Africa. And Canada is lumped in with Latin America. Is this an indication of the level of respect "this newspaper" holds said regions/countries in?
  • Their choice of fonts/page layouts.