K8 the GR8

Raining cats and dogs as usual, business tends to be quiet on days like this. 

I pulled up at a taxi rank just after lunchtime and noticed that all the other cars were deserted, bar one - a people-carrier into which was crammed at least eight taxi drivers.  I knocked on the window and was let into the secret smoky underworld that is cabby conversation.  I sparked up a schmergel and listened.

They had the newspaper out and were reading about this rape incidence in Dublin, yet another excuse to be paranoid about foreigners.  I learned many interesting things (and heard much racial hatred which I won’t be repeating here) which blew my mind, to give examples…

Apparently forgeign nationals only need to get 30% of the Public Service Vehicle test correct, as opposed to the 70% us nationals need.  Also, foreign-nationals aren’t asked for a back-ground check before they enter the taxi-driving business, yet we Irish need full Gardee clearance.

They say that this is to give foreign nationals a hand-up, an easier way to score employment.  That’s all very nice and stuff, but these people aren’t thick… with a bit of practice and a year or two living in this country they’d have it down no problem.  It’s only the rules of the road and a rough knowledge of city layout… hardly astrophysics! 

Besides, isn’t this sort of stuff important?  I would have thought a knowledge of roadsigns would be rather helpful for driving?  And as for the back-ground check… are they kidding?  They’re asking the people of Ireland to just ‘trust’ their taxi driver?

Is it really true that complete foreigners can land in the country and just dive straight into the taxi-driving business, winging it the whole way?!?  I can’t imagine having the guts to go to say… Nigeria and start charging poor unsuspecting punters for trips to places I can’t even pronounce, let alone find.

Pure madness.

I feel so sorry for foreign national taxi drivers today.  Nobody’s going to want to use them now as they’ve all been tarred with the same pidgeon.  They’ve busted their chops trying to learn the ins and outs of the cabbying business so that they can feed their families in this God-forsaken economy of ours, and now they are to us what the Al Quaeda are to the Americans, just because of a stupid head-line and the usual short-comings of our Irish Big Brother.

I’m laughing though.  Who’d suspect an innocent looking female taxi driver of evil intent?  Nobody, that’s who. 

I could have fun with that…

I lifted Mrs O’Leary’s swollen ankles into the passenger’s side of my car.  I could tell she was embarrassed and angry with life that she should be in the position to ask a perfect stranger to do so, so I made light small-talk as I sat back in the driver’s seat.  Mrs O’Leary was quiet, she seemed tired… her lump of groceries in the boot was a fair reason for this, so I turned on the air-flow and pumped up the radio volume…

-settling *groan* from O’Leary-

… and animated voices filled the car as I drove toward Soldier’s Row.  Matt Cooper was fiercely battling for the last word with several hot headed YESsers and NOers of this hilarious Lisbon Treaty, and  I confess to going ’round a rind-about maybe too many times just to hear what this one lady (Kathy Sinnot) had to say.  When she finished her point, she received a round of applause and my passenger collapsed beside me with laughter.  It was a most wonderful and welcome sound.

“Jaysus but that clinches it for me!  I’m gonna vote NO just to piss them off!”  she began to breathe quickly and excitedly and I knew a rant was on it’s way.  “It’s gas… nobody really knows what’s goin’ on!  I was watchin’ a chap get de twenty questions dere on d’telly last night - sure de more he said de more confused he go’ -  I’ve never heard anyone say so much withou’ sayin’ so little!!!  Now here’s yer one… she’s got them by the bollix and they haven’t a clue what to say ‘coz they haven’t read the feckin’ thing either!!!”  she collapses with laughter once more.

“Think abourd’i… “  she says, breathing her giggles out “…if we all vote NO at least they’ll org’nise it better the next time ’round!”

I had to admire her logic.  I’m not really comfortable either signing a contract that’s written in double-dutch.  And those posters?!?!  Please.  Those slogan’s aren’t even impressing the village idiot.

I’m proud to be European, I like this neck of the woods.  I’m not sure that I trust Ireland’s system fully, they seem to be making a lot of dodgy choices lately.

(I’m playing ‘Sim City’ on the Nintender DS in between fares in the taxi these days.  I tried raising taxes and decreasing funding on public health, transport and education to free up more funds and guess what?  The poplulation all fucked off to find better living elsewhere… haven’t we all dreamed about doing that?  Why are we still here?!!)

So I’m thinking… maybe it’s a double-bluff?  Maybe the NOers found the small print and are scrutinizing the things that probably won’t happen? It just seems like the original ink has had coffee spilled on it-  it’s just a blurred mess and now everybody’s trying to remember what it might have said.

I’m saying NO on this, the 5th of June with nine days to go.  The YES people had better all shut up, or make some factual sense in that time because otherwise you’re just pissing me off.

(Toxic Steve)

I love my Ireland - she’s beautiful but she’s run by muppets.  I like to think of her as independant, but that might just be my blood talking…

“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies… The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people.”

Are these just pretty words?

Mrs O’Leary sure had a bounce in her step after she tipped me €5.  I think she saw the light.

(Don’t click this link by the way.)

My tit:

This boob ashtray was given to TAT by his sister many years ago.  There is no argument or conversation serious enough not to be grounded by the words “Pass me your tit there…”

My bush:

I’ve had this miniature rose bush since I was 17.  It grew to over 50cm tall and was starting to behave oddly, so I pruned it to half it’s size.  It’s been flowering like crazy ever since, but last Spring it got attacked un-mercifully by a little gross army of greenfly.  They say you shouldn’t spray a plant with bug-killer while it’s flowering, but I sprayed it anyway because the little beasties were everywhere and as a result, the plant almost met it’s maker.  I give it warm showers every other day to wash the straggler beasties away and then keep it in the sunniest spot there is.  This TLC seems to have worked - there are a few tiny fresh green leaves now.

Here’s the thing; Even in it’s darkest hours, it persisted with that flower.  The bud was being eaten alive but it carried on, and flowered the prettiest darn flower it’s ever made against all odds.

That is some inspirational shit right there.  Was that God’s work or mine?

A young man was arrested in Dublin City last night for the attempted smuggling of snuff with a street value of approximately €2.99.

Jefferson Davis of no fixed abode allegedly alerted his accomplice (known as ‘K8 the Gr8′) to his situation on live television, using morse code during the Angelus from his holding cell.  A guard commented; “Jaysus but that Jack Bauer lad hasn’t a patch on Davis!”

The communication led to a botched rescue attempt resulting in severe weather changes and an accidental chemical leak into the Dublin City water supply system, however the pair escaped and fortunately later saved the world from the resulting epidemic of mutant pidgeons.  Witnesses gave an account of an elaborate scheme involving The Spire on O’Connell Street, a tankload of peanut butter, a beer mat and 10,000 supermarket trolleys.

The Gardaí gave the heroes a glowing report.

Here is something I Stumbled upon that pleased the tiny hairs on the back of my neck.  I hope it pleases yours too.

This is what you shall do:  Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants… have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

-Walt Whitman

(source: http://www.rfincher.com/)

My, but aren’t Irish men horny on Sundays?!  I made €32 on tips alone, just by flirting behind the wheel today, as opposed to €8 yesterday and €12 on Thursday.  What’s so special about Sundays?

KA-CHINGGG!!!

I heard a snippet of news on the radio that made me giggle:  Apparently when Bertie told his co-workers he was going to throw in the towel, they “wept openly”.  Grown men?  Politicians?  I don’t think so.  I think Bertie pre-empted it.  I think he ate an extra-hot vindaloo and washed it down with five pints of Guinness the night before, then stuffed his pockets with onions the next morning before work.  It was the gas that made them cry… the gas.  Either that, or politicians are damn good actors!  Oh wait… right, never mind.

I heard a most excellent song on the radio today… several times, in fact.  It’s a version of House of Pain’s ‘Jump!’, which is a song that sparks the dancing flames into almost everybody when they hear it.  It is possibly the no.1 best song that one could hear in a nightclub and I love it.  This version is in flagrante as Gaeilge.

You Oirish readers out there know exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s Des Bishop, fair play to him… he’s learned the language in 4.2 minutes and has now taken on the coolest song known to mankind.  Here’s a link to the song on Donncha O’Caoimh’s site, Holy Shmoly.  (Don’t listen to this video if you are over the age of 50.  You will hate it.  Especially you.)  I can’t find the radio version, but I’ll buy the single if it’s released because it’s a pretty darn excellent version.

Thing is though, everything the Irish try to coolify ends up being naff in some way.  I’m eternally proud of their efforts and of the language itself, but somehow there is nothing that will entice us to relinquish that final little bit of British rule… the English language.  This song might just be enough to entice our schoolkids into pricking up their ears regarding the old Gaeilge, but that’s because they’re Irish.

As for the rest of the world… they don’t know that ‘Léim’ means ‘jump’!  All they hear is: ‘LAME, LAME, LAME, LAME, LAME!’  *sigh*  Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the definition of irony.

On a different note, a good blogger buddy of mine has been censored.  Yes!  Censored!  Read all about it here: Brianf; the hate monger blog  (Oh my lord!  Somebody else is on to us!  Kill it!  Kill it!)  Seems as though Bush -the big bad rookie himself- has found some more bitches.

Propaghandi?

On another different but equally irking note,  I read this on Going Like Sixty’s site: Bloggers are being sued out there… read all about it!  I’m pretty sure that this sueing pillock is only after a domain name, but like I say… I’m naive.  The offending site is at Neurodiversity.  It makes for interesting reading.

Bloody hell… I only came on here to write about my extra tips!  Wine is excellent blog lubrication I find.

To finish up, I would like to quote a rather insightful spam I received today;

Humph. Someone has to force me to read this post. It’s too big and boring. Brevity is the sister of talent, remember that.

Thank you, Adriana Naked Lombard xxx, I shall remember this to the end of my…

 post.

I’m officially a big fat hypocrite.  I used to love whingeing about taxi drivers, saying what wankers they were to push me out of a lane or cut me off.  I joked when people told me I’d be the same… I swore I’d remain considerate, but no, today I fell over the edge. 

Drivers dithering at the lip of a slip lane are asking for me to overtake them.  People sitting at filter arrows across from me seem to want me to cut them off, it’s not my fault.  Taxi drivers are just on auto-pilot most of the time… I am, even after only three days.  I’m too busy concentrating on the radio, my destination and other car’s bumpers for me to remember to be nice. 

So on behalf of all the taxi drivers in Ireland, we’re sorry, but if you’re dozy, we’ll just keep right on trucking.  We have to.  Feel free to bully back, it makes a nice break from the routine!

I found a video for you.  I hope it works.  It’s a rather inspiring story about an adopted African boy:

Thanks Kelly

I worked my first day as a taxi-driver today.

My first customer was a really sound one armed-bloke from Los Angeles.  He is thinking about opening a Mexican restaraunt in Bray which I very verbally fully supported, as there aren’t many places you can find good chili around Wicklow.

I then had an airport run, so got to spazz around on the M50 for a while listening to my choons in the early springtime sunshine, so that was pretty nice. 

I’ll tell you what though, it’s nifty having a CB radio.  There was a quiet spell at 6 o’clock when I got to sit on my thumb and read the paper for a whole hour, and I got bored.  There was no chatter at all on the radio, Bray was dead.  Everyone must have decided to walk home I suppose.  I had to resist some serious temptation to press the button and tell a really dirty joke. 

Somebody dare me to do it.  Give me something really short but pee-inducingly funny to say on the CB and I’ll do it.  Go on, I know you have material.  Cough it up.

I don’t understand politics, mainly because I’ve never tried to.  It’s not something that upsets me much, at least it didn’t until I started reading blogs and found I had to skip over the political ones - my brain just can’t process the sattire or the original point.  No offence to political sattirists, it’s just the way I am.

I do, however, understand children very well, and it wasn’t until this morning when little Sally next door came in to play with Puppychild that the truth suddenly hit me.  The parallells between the infant world and the political world were right in front of me all the time!

To demonstrate this theory, for this next part I will assume the position of both a child between the ages of two and five, and a political bigwig.

~*~

- If you are doing something interesting, I will butt in and do it with you until I am better at it than you are, unless you get bored with it and go on to do something else.  At this point I will change too and continue proving I am better than you are, until such a time that I fall asleep or a body of greater power comes along and stops me.

- Hello, I see you’re new to this neighbourhood!  See this kid/country here?  This is my friend.  You can’t play with us until you provide evidence that you have a stash of Smarties/Weapons of Mass Destruction.  That’s just how it works.  Ok?

- If you push me, I will not ask you why you pushed me, I will just go ahead and push you back.  I will continue fighting with you for no underlying reason until such a point where a body of greater power intervenes or one of us starts crying.  If there is no body of greater power around, then I guess we are both fucked.

- Hey!  Where did you get that ball/space exploration equipment?  That is MINE.  Not going to give it up?  Fine, I’ll just ask my mum to go and buy me one, and if that doesn’t work, maybe I’ll just draw a picture of it and put it against my bedroom window so you’ll think I have one, then you won’t want yours any more!  HA!  No wait… easier yet… I’ll get the other kid down the road to steal it for me.  Yeah.

- Where did you get that money?  What?!  You found it on the ground?  Well, then it’s my money, because I dropped it yesterday, and no, I won’t tell you where because I don’t have to prove myself to you.  Not going to give it up?  FINE!  I’ll tell my mom/the media!

- So you want to play our game?  I don’t know whether or not you’re allowed - you’ll have to ask the leader.  What do you mean he already told you to ask me?  I’m not the leader so it’s not my problem… go ask… somebody else, OK? ‘Bye!!!

- If you see a tree full of apples and think it’s pretty, you’re wierd/left wing.  Me?  I see a tree full of apples, I get my dad to chop it down and bring it home.  I’ll then pick all the apples, shout; ‘I’m going to turn you into poo!’ and eat every last one without sharing with you, just because I can.  And you know what else?  If I feel sick afterwards I will come and throw up all over you because it’s your fault for not stopping me.  So there.

~*~

There you have it.  My stab at politics.  I know now, that when I read a headline in the papers like:

“Ahern insists he will stay on until 2012″

I’ll know to translate it roughly as…

“Bertie needs a nap.”

Beat that, Marx-y baby!  I finally understand…

I had a bloody interesting conversation with a litter warden a few days ago.  It was the sort of conversation that left me thinking, the sort of conversation that could even be excellent thesis material.  It went something like this:

-Why is it that we Irish insist on emptying our ashtrays out of our car windows, even though we’re proud of our country?

-Why is it that we keep smoking even through the drastic price hikes and the knowledge that it’s killing us?

-Why do we keep speeding on our roads when we know we’re putting ourselves and others in grave danger?

-Why do we have appalling statistics for underage drinking?

I’ll tell you why.  It’s because we Irish are born rebels.  Rebellion still flows through our veins; we have, after all, only been independant for just over two generations.  It’s a latent feeling that we don’t deserve to be spoken down to, to be ruled by anyone other than ourselves.  We want to be our own boss and have ample intelligence to know what is or is not good for us.

Moreover, I bet if somebody was to analyse statistics, they might find similar trends in other historically supressed countries.

The people holding the purse are worried and embarrased.  They want to stop us from killing ourselves and prepetuating our bad reputation, but they are unfortunately going about it the wrong way entirely.

We are sick and tired of people in authority wagging their chubby fingers at us and shouting ‘NO, NO, NO!’  Price hikes aren’t working.  Restrictions aren’t working either.  Fines are possibly the worst way to solve this problem… they just fatten the hate and disrespect.

You know what the government should be doing?  They should be re-inforcing the original Irish pride, yes, the stuff they named the sliced pan after!  For example, the litter warden I was talking to doesn’t hand out fines to litter offenders.  She goes to the source.  She encourages school kids to take part in recycling programmes, gets them to pick up the rubbish on the streets left there by their ignorant elders.  They see the fruits of their hard work and they are proud kids.  She is respectfully teaching them instead of punishing them.  It’s so simple.

Wouldn’t it be radical for bill board posters to say something like…

‘Go ahead and speed if you want to, but you’re killing your own people.  Your ancestors fought for their freedom, so why undo their hard work?’

Or

‘Congratulations, thanks to you and your fellow Irish people, Ireland could have the lowest rate of alcohol related deaths in the world!’

Instead of supressing our kids, we should be encouraging them!  Don’t tell them they’re stupid for drinking, tell them that they are the much-needed brains of our future.  Ask them with respect to preserve those brains, and listen to their needs for alternative entertainment during their wilderness years.  Respect goes a lot further than bullying, but I’m afraid bullying is the only tactic being used these days.  Our government seems to have lost faith in us, in our ability to take care of ourselves.

We Irish need to learn how to respect ourselves, to re-kindle the pride.  We should stop whingeing about the government and infecting our young’uns with hatred, and take matters into our own hands for we are indeed big and ugly enough. 

Coincidentally, I’m listening to ‘Warning’ by Incubus at the moment.  Brandon Boyd just sang these words to me:

“I suggest we learn to love ourselves before it’s made illegal”