I didn't watch that Fallout program that was on RTE a few days ago because I'm still trying to recover from the trauma of The Day After and Threads which managed to make Sheffield look even more bleak than it actually is. Planet Potato had a look at it though and he concluded that it was pretty shite.

Then today I'm trawling around looking for some news having just recovered from the upset stomach I had yesterday and I read this:

RTE’s documentary-style drama, screened this week, used BBC-style news reports and amateur video footage from mobile phones to portray panic on Dublin’s streets as terrified residents scrambled to get out of the city.

The national broadcaster later said it logged 30 calls from viewers who believed the disaster was actually happening.

Jesus wept! This is 2006 and 30 people thought that there was panic and mayhem because of meltdown at Sellafield. Unbelievable. Maybe the world was a more innocent place when Orson Wells had people running the streets with the War of the Worlds but there's just no excuse for that now.

I mean, even if there was a nuclear disaster at Sellafield why the fuck would you ring RTE?

"Hello, RTE. How can I help you?"

"Hello, I'm lookin' at dis disastoh on de telly, reet, and I'm, like, wondering wha' de sketch is an' all dat."

"Yes, it seems as if we're all going to die from radiation poisoning and suffer hideous mutations with a slight chance of acid rain from the west."

"Nice one, bud. Cheers."

*click*

"He-yar, Antionette, we're bleedin' fucked, so we are. Let's go rob Footlocker."

The funniest thing is that Environment Minister Dick Roche has been complaining that the program portrayed Irish people in a bad light. He said "It was a slur on the Irish people. They were suggesting there would be riots on the streets of Dublin. We have a very sophisticated society here in Ireland.”

Excuse me whilst I wipe away the tears of mirth. We're so sophisticated that 30 people rang up the TV station to find out if the drama series was real and the Minister might want to cast his mind back a few months when the thoughts of a few protestants marching down O'Connell Street caused major riots. Imagine what a fucking nuclear disaster would do.

He should be given the job of Minister for talking hysterical shite and those people that phoned up need to be put down, the fucking gobshites.

I sat on the floor head in the toilet bowl.

"Bleeeeuurrrrggggh!", I said as 500 cubic litres of vomit gushed forth. It took so long to get out I thought I was going to die because I couldn't breath.

I flushed. Breathed deeply once or twice. Oh-oh...

"Bleeeeeuuuurrrrgggghaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!", and once more enough puke to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool spewed out of me.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Then I wiped my forehead getting chunks on my face. Mmmmm, boooootiful.

Bastardface appeared at my side. He gave a little whine. Wine? Oh Jesus....

"Blarrraaarlllllaaaarrralllraalrlaraaarrrgh", 86 pints.

"I'm not feeling the best, old friend", I said when I lifted my head up. He looked at me with those big brown eyes, so full of compassion and understanding (even if he didn't quite understand why I flushing perfectly good food down the toilet). He nudged me with his nose.

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllppppppphhhh", went I as I vomited all over his head.

I think it must have been the Bird's Eye crispy pancakes that had been in my freezer since 1989. I vaguely remember hearing the words of my dear old Mam as I searched for something to eat last night.

'Oh, they only put expiry dates on things so you have to buy more, they're just a general guide'.

"Huuuuurrrrrrrrrrrlllll", and I'm sure there was a bit of poo in my vomit.

I had a shower, stuck Bastardface's barf stained head underneath and washed him off, then curled up in a ball on my bed.

On the upside I'm now supermodel thin.

So Prince Phillip, husband of the Queen of England, is visiting Dublin today. He's famous for his witty quotes.

This will be his second visit to Dublin as he came here before in 1998. At some point he slipped away from the main party and ended up in Ron's. He pulled up a stool at sat at the bar beside me and the lads.

"You there, tavern owner. A pint of Guinness and none of your lip", he said to Ron.

"My God, it's a shame the famine didn't kill more of you disgusting Micks", he said looking at Dirty Dave. "I thought only pigs wallowed in their own filth."

He turned his attention to Stinking Pete then. "What a ghastly little Paddy you are. You're like Terry Wogan with the plague."

Jimmy was sat open mouthed.

"Close your face you ghastly man. You Irish are stupid enough already without making faces to look like total mongs."

Ron gave him his pint.

"One of the natives will pay for it, I'm sure", he said.

"You there", he said to me. "I realise it's probably a good year's wages for you, you whiskered terrorist - although that Mountbatten always gave me a pain in my arse. Bloody do-gooder he was. Kudos for that one - pay the bloody man for my drink. Barter if you have to. I'm sure you've got a spare goat or something, you wretched indigent."

"Barman, give me some kind of snack. I couldn't eat the gruel they gave me at that reception. Typical Irish fare, they said. Pig swill, I say. 'Tayto'? You'd think you ninnies would have learned by now to move away from potatoes as your staple diet."

"You two, fight!", he ordered Dave and Pete. "Come on! Drunken Irish bastards. Fight. It's what you do, isn't it? Get drunk and fight like inebriated savages. The whole world knows it."

What a marvellous man. I hope he comes back in to Ron's for a pint today.

Bloggers who announce everything get on my tits. You know what I mean, the ones who say "Well, I'm giving up blogging. I've run out of things to talk about/can't be arsed/have better things to do" and they only do it because they want people to go "Ooooh nooooooo! Don't! I love you! PLEEEEASE!"

I know most blogs are ego trips but, you know, if you stop fucking posting we'll get the message soon enough. Once we've gone three months without a post we might just realised you've stopped or are, with any luck, dead or something.

Same with the ones who tell you when they're going to alter their posting schedule.

"From now on I won't be posting in the afternoon but I shall post every morning between 9.15am and 9.37am. I don't want to restrict myself though."

Very good, thanks for telling us. It's not like we wouldn't have fucking realised after a few days that this is what you were doing. We're not all fucking simpletons. What is this need to tell us everything?

It's like people who send you a text message and they say "I'll ring you later."

Just ring. It's not necessary to to advise me of everything you do.

"Just going for a poo, then I'm going wipe my arse, flush the bog, wash my hands, feed the dog, close the windows, lock the doors, pull down the blinds, switch on the radio, double check the lock on the back door, turn on the alarm and then I'll call over to you."

Fucking hell. Does nobody remember the world where we didn't have instant communication all the time? If you were late you were late. If there was a big problem you'd ring and explain but you never felt you had to share the details of your life because the person at the other end didn't actually care.

I still don't care. I don't give a fuck if you're giving up blogging. I'll find a new blog to read. I don't care what you have to do at home before you arrive just fucking arrive. You'd get it done quicker if you weren't giving yourself a thumb based RSI with your manic texting.

Just fucking stop it. You're annoying me.

Census. I just filled in my census form last evening. Coincided with a card game. How exciting. I hope they believe me coz it's all true. Honest. Wanna peek?

List every person who spent the night of Sunday 23rd April in the household...

Person No. First name and Surname
1 - James the Bollix
2 - Dirty David McDavids
3 - Stinking Peter McPeterson
4 - Lucky Luciano Stasi
5 - Ronald Barman
6 - Splodge

What is your name?

Twenty Major

What is your date of birth?

26 09 1865

What is your place of birth?

Dollymount Strand

What is your nationality?

Irish. Mostly.

Where do you usually live?

In my house.

What is your religion?

Jewlimtholic. Please execute anyone who puts 'Jedi'.

Can you speak Irish?

Ní thuigim an ceist.

How many children have you given birth to?

18

What is your ethnic or cultural background?

Guinness drinking, cigarette smoking raconteurist.

How do you usually travel to work, school or college?

Rickshaw

What is the highest leve of education (full-time or part-time) which you have completed to date?

Postgraduate diploma from the school of hard knocks

What is (was) your occupation in your main job?

Shepherd

What is (was) the full address at which you actually work(ed)?

Second field on the left, just past the Hellfire Club, Co. Dublin

I declare that this form is correct and complete to the best of my knowledge.



You can shove your census up your holes you nosey cunts.

...world keeps on turning, much to his chagrin I'm sure.

When I started this blog some people suggested I might actually be Kevin Myers. Preposterous. As if I'd resign from the Irish Times. You can write any old bollocks and they'll print it.

I do make up 75% of their letters page though.

When are the blog fights really going to kick off? At the moment the Irish blogosphere is quite friendly, relaxed and more or less everyone is quite happy to slap the back of everyone else.

Of course there are those blogs which keep a close eye on other blogs (well, used to at least) and there's probably no love lost there. Then in recent days United Irelander has been having some kind of a battle with some girl who isn't actually two girls at all but just one girl - that's if UI is to be believed, and who are we to doubt him?

However, for the Irish blogging scene to really flourish we need some proper vitriol, some terrible enemies, a massive scrap between one or two of the higher profile blogs. Now, I don't mean some tiresome debate about prods or catholics in Norn Iron. They go on all the time I'm sure and those people argue and debate and cajole and snipe but at the end of the day they never convince anyone to change their point of view. Their squabbles will always exist and they don't count in this particular piece.

No, what we need is for somebody to take such umbrage with the content or style or writing of another blog that they just lose it and rip into the other blogger, resorting to terrible personal remarks and the dreaded 'ad hominem' attack.

Then we need friends of the attackee to jump on, blogarifically speaking of course, on the attacker which will then prompt his or her chums to back them up and all of a sudden there's civil war. Lines are drawn, insults are traded, threats are made and someone will pipe up in the comments 'Can't we all just calm down? Why can't we all be friends?'.

And here's the thing, the more the Irish blogging scene grows the more likely this is to happen because we just can't all be friends. It's just not the online way.

Let me use football fans as an example. They often use forums or message boards to discuss their team or the players or the manager etc. They all have one thing in common in that they all support the same team. However, this does not stop this particular forum from being divided by people with different perspectives and points of view. It may not happen at first but it will eventually. Optimists v Pessimists. Those that think X is a great player, those that think X is a fucking waste of space. Those that think they need to sign Y and those that think they need to sign Z.

In time those supporters of the same team will be bitching and name calling and fighting and point scoring all the time. People with whom they have this one big thing in common, with whom they share common hopes and objectives - their team to win as many games as possible - but enemies will be made, fights will happen, and it can get nasty.

So why should we all be chummy just because we're Irish blogs?

Maybe it's the detachment and the fact the contact is not terribly personal. Ask any Irish person who's lived abroad and they end up being friends with people that they would never be friends with back home but because they share being foreign together that's put aside. Isn't blogging a bit like that?

At the moment what we all have in common is that we're all, for the most part, Irish bloggers and we're in a sort of honeymoon period, but at some point that is going to change. The bonhomie will give way to ennui, the ability to ignore somebody's post without making a snide comment will be reduced, there won't be such a reluctance to blog about other people's blogs which at the moment (one or two examples aside) generally consists of 'great post over at X's blog' or 'check out this from X, it's very good'. And that's grand but a more general deconstruction of other people's beliefs, opinions, skills and writing is inevitable and while I'm sure the scene will stay friendly for the most part this 'conflict', if you will, has to happen for the Bogosphere to grow up and develop.

People will start to question other's motives for blogging, criticise their policies about commenting or interaction, wonder out loud about things they write and take them to pieces in their own blogs and discussion about specific blogs will move from furtive email and messenger conversations and into the public domain.

It's going to be fun because for many people blogging is their first venture into the online world and it really is getting in at the shallow end. Don't look at me to start it though. I love all of you.

Honestly.

People who say methinks do my fucking head in.

"Oooh, methinks I'll have a babycham" or "Methinks I'll take a lovely walk along the shore."

You're not living next door to Geoffrey fucking Chaucer. You're not some kind of yeoman or manciple taking moste care going to the inne, are you?

So why can't you just say 'I think'?

And lots of the time they make this funny little face when they say it too. Their eyebrows go up and their lips purse a bit and this smug look comes over their face and then they say it.

Last night Dirty Dave came in to Ron's. Ron asked him what he wanted.

"Methinks I shall have a pint of your finest ale", replied Dave in his best Peter Bowles from an Irish RM impression (and he sounds more like Stan Bowles when he does it).

"A pint of Smithwicks then, grand."

"Methinks you're a fine barkeep, barkeep."

"Dave", I said.

"Yes, Twenty?"

"Stop saying methinks or I'll kill you."

"Har har, methinks you're overreacting, Twenty."

"Dave, really. Stop it. It wrecks my head."

"Really? Methinks you doth protest too much!"

*DOYNK*

"Here you are, Dave, one pint of Smith... er ... where's he gone then, Twenty?"

"Down there."

"What the fuck is he doing down there?"

"One of your heavy ashtrays got picked up by a poltergeist and it smacked him across the head with it."

"I've warned them cunts about driving away my custom. Pint of Smithwicks, Twenty?"

"It'd be a shame to waste it. I'll get the money out of Dave's wallet for you."

20% of Irish adults would consider plastic surgery according to a new survey. More women would have it than men but still lots of men would too. I wouldn't. I'm quite happy with my breasts the way they are.

I would have surgery if they could give me cool powers instead of just breaking my nose and resetting in a different position. Sure if I wanted that done I could just set foot in Coolock and there are only too many people there who would happily perform the procedure.

If you could get Wolverine claws put in or webbing between your fingers and toes so you could swim like the Man from Atlantis then I'd probably give it a lash but too many people are afraid of getting old. Tough shit, there's nothing you can do about it and the older you are when you get plastic surgery the more ridiculous it looks.

Before Stinking Pete's wife left him (after he won some money on the lottery and fucked off the Costa del Sol for 6 weeks blowing it all on booze and food) she got a new pair of boobs. Well, it's not like they were augmenting what was there as the woman had two backs. She was flatter than a 12 year old Biafran boy. Poor Stinking Pete had no idea before he married her.

"How come you never noticed?", we asked.

"Ahh, back in those days you were lucky to get a kiss and a cuddle nevermind a go under her gansey and sure she'd padded her bra like mad."

At first he liked them because there were boobs where his wife had been but then he grew weary of them. He said they didn't feel real. He said they were unnatural. He said "It's like sucking on a skin covered, sand filled balloon."

They didn't make his sex life any better, nor hers, but the last thing we need to talking about is their sex life. You haven't seen him, nor have you see her. Suffice to say I thank God every day that they didn't breed. Nobody's seen her in about 2 years now so she's probably dead.

I can think of some celebrities that need plastic surgery though:

Ryan Tubridy - face removal
Tom Cruise - mouth tuck
Katie Holmes - annoying lump removal (I mean Tom, not the 'baby' - I'd bet good money that the whole thing was a sham).
Pete Burns - Liposuction
Smeg Ryan - funny bone implant.

Any more?

Imagine the scene. You are in a queue in a supermarket or a bank or the post office. You get an itch on your head. What do you do? Exactly. You scratch it.

The same if you get an itch on your arm, your leg, your foot or your back (even though scratching them makes you look like some kind of Tom Waits style 'tard).

Ok, so imagine yourself in the same queue and you get an itch on your bollocks. Why is it that people look at you with such horror and disdain if you scratch? I'm not scratching to give myself pleasure, you four-eyed harridan, I'm just trying to relieve myself of the itch on my scrotum. There's nothing dirty about it, it's totally natural.

The other thing you need to bear in mind before you stare at me with such disapproval is that it's a well known fact that if you don't scratch an itch you get another itch in a much worse place. So you get an itch on your head, you ignore it and another one pops up on your shin and you ignore than and another one pops up on your arse. Ask anyone who has spent time in a plaster cast, they'll back me up.

You have to scratch otherwise an itch on the bollocks can only lead to two places:

1 - An itch right on your ringpiece or somewhere in the crack of your arse
2 - That bit between your balls and your hole

So Lady Muck, I either scratch my bollocks in the first place or you're going to witness me dig around my pants to scratch my hole or my gooch. It's up to you. I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway.

If I'm itching I will scratch and I don't care who sees me so you can fuck right off or I will lift my leg and fart at you because that's perfectly natural too. If you don't fart you leave yourself open for spontaneous combustion and I'm not going that way, no chance.

(PostSecret is a post by Twenty Major where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.)



(New secrets are posted here every whenever I can be arsed.)

Foreign nationals make up just nine per cent of the workforce, they account for 25 per cent of the deaths on Irish roads.

The solution is obvious, isn't it? Just don't allow foreign people to drive over here. I'm sure most of them come with a driving licence from their own country and just swap it for an Irish one. So when Władek or Dobrosław or Franciszek arrives here they should be banned from driving until they have lived here for at least one year.

Let's face it, most of them arrive here with little or no English so reading road signs is nigh on impossible at first. They confuse 'Clonmel 34km' and think it means 'Drive like a mad cunt around this corner' or 'Stop' with 'Plough into oncoming traffic'. As well as that most of them come from countries where they drive on the right so they're just like cats.

If you have a cat and you move house you must keep your cat indoors for a period of time so that their internal radar/homing device reconfigures itself to their new location. It's the same with Eastern Europeans. They're coming over and not adjusting. They're landing at Dublin airport, getting into a car and before you know it they're involved in a massive accident. I'd suggest most of the time it's caused by them driving on the wrong side of the road because they're simply not reconfigured to Irish life. You wouldn't let your cat out on the first night in your new home so why would you let a Polish or Latvian person drive as soon as they come to Ireland?

Seeing as they all get all kinds of benefits as soon as they arrive anyway some kind of discount travel card shouldn't be too much of a problem for when some busy-bodies try and insist they need their cars to get to work. Once they, like a cat in a new house, have adapted to their environment then they can take an Irish driving test and if they pass it then they can have a car.

Surely, after seeing this statistic, nobody could argue that it wasn't for the greater good and it's not discriminatory, it's simply common sense. These people can't understand words without many Zs and Ks and very few vowels. It takes them time to get used to the complex nature of the English language. If we can decide that a person is too young to drive until they're 17 it's not racist to decide that a person is too foreign to drive until they can understand road signs and maps and other drivers hand gestures.

Of course I simply bought my driving licence many years ago from Counterfeit Conor. No test. No lessons. I just bought a car, bought my licence and away I went. Much easier and I have never once had an accident.

These days I drive an enormous SUV because they're a major contributor to global warming and it's fucking freezing in Ireland most of the time. I'm doing my bit for my fellow countrymen and women. Don't all thank me at once.

"And on the third day Jesus rows again."

Apparently he was quite successful in the coxless pairs.

*bring bring* *knockity knock*

"Ave, Jimmius The Bollixus. What a fine day it is in old Jerusalem."

"Ave a tu, Twentius Majorus. Just coming around to see if you fancy a gourd of wine or two."

"Fantasticus idea but I have to work later."

"What a pain in the anusus. How come?"

"Oh, you know that fucking Agnus Dei, Jesus?"

"Ahh, I have heard of him, he's not exactly compus mentis if you ask me."

"Isn't that the veritas. Anyway, old Romulus Murphy was supposed to be on today but his children have typhoid so I have to help crucify the fucker."

"Infelictus, old chap. Why don't you come around after? Stinkius Peticus and Dirtius Dave will be there too. In the Ovis Niger from about 8 o'clock, erm, us."

"Grand! See you then."

*some time later*

"Come on now, fella, I don't want to whack you with this thing any more but you can't just lie there. What? I know it's fuckin' heavy and I don't envy you one little bit but if you don't pick that cross up and get moving then I'm gonna get a bollocking from my boss and I know you wouldn't want that to happen. I'm just doing me job, mate.

Good man, you're very forgiving I have to say. I wouldn't be half as nice as you about it. Listen, here's what I'll do but don't fuckin' let on I'm a soft touch or anything or I'll spear you in the bollix. I'll get someone to give you a hand with that thing for a while. A big strong African or something. Ahh, you're welcome, son. In this heat you need it an' all an' anyway.

Here, you! Yeah, you there. What's your name? Ok, Simon, come over here. Because I'm telling you to, that's why. Look Simon, I'm having a pretty shitty day, all right? Don't make me come over there because if I do I'm going to batter you. I just want you to give this lad a bit of a hand with his cross, he's fuckin' wrecked, look at him. What? How do you know that I won't just leave you there and crucify you instead? Are you going around saying you're the son of God and pissing off pharisees all over the shop, are you? No, then you're safe enough, so shut the fuck up and come over here and carry this thing for a little bit. Good lad, wasn't so hard, was it? I'll give you the nod when it's time to hand it back. On you go.

Right, yer man there'll carry this for a little bit for you. Give you a chance to rest a bit. Here you there! What are you doing? Ok, you can wipe his face for all the difference it'll make. Ok, off you go now. Women, eh? Read any good scriptures lately? Nah, me neither. It's all just the same story done over and over at this stage, innit? There's no new ideas at all. That hat must be fucking killing you..."

*some time later*

Wooo-hoooo, look at that. I'm after rolling two sixes. That's a go on your sister for me, Spartacus. What? Fuck, you're right, looks like rain. Amazing how quick it rolls in sometimes, eh? Best get inside. Let me just check on the lads. The two thieves are still up there roaring, yer other man's had it though. Best off if you ask me. Fuckin' harsh way to go. Them Jews stitched him up right and proper, eh? Nice of him to forgive us but we knew what we were doing. Like it was the first time we'd crucified someone! Pfffff, we're hardly amateurs. Right, let's get some shelter. I'm gettin' soaked."

*some time later*

"Ave, Twentius!"

"Ave, lads. Man, what a fucking day. The vox populi in one ear, the son of God in the other. Non facilis, non facilis. Get some overtime though so first round is on me. Ronicus, vinos all round!!"

*some time much, much later*

"Stinkius Peticus, you are a massive cunt but te amo. You an' all, Jimmius, even you Dirtius. Yer me besht matesh, you know that? You know what? *hic* It started out shite but this has been a pretty Good Friday."

"In vino veritas, Twentius, in vino veritas".

Dirty Dave hasn't been feeling too well in recent months so he went to the hospital where they did all kinds of tests on him.

He reckons they took more blood than your typical American soldier in an Iraqi Mosque. He said they poked and prodded him, took samples of all his bodily fluids and at one point a doctor had to put his finger up his hole which he says was uncomfortable but strangely familiar (he's totally blanked out his time in the Christian Brother run orphanage when he was just a kid).

So he came into Ron's last night and gave us the latest.

"Guess what, lads?!", he said enthusiastically.

"What, Dirty Dave?", asked Jimmy the Bollix.

"Well, I've just been on to the hospital and they want me to go see a psychologist tomorrow because they reckon I could be bi-polar. Howdya like them apples?!!"

"Erm, those apples are fine, thanks, but sorry to hear about your condition."

"Sorry? What for? It means I'm much better than you. You could only live at one or the other but I could live in the Arctic or the Antarctic."

"Dave, you clown, bi-polar means you're a manic depressive like John Denver who flew his plane into a mountain or 1970s Lois Lane actress Margot Kidder who once ripped all the skin off her legs and ate it."

"Oh, that's a bit shit. I don't feel depressed though. Or manic."

"That's often the first symptom."

"Bollocks. I'm depressed now."

"Look Dave, relax. I'm sure it's fine. Here, take these Joy Division and Leonard Cohen CDs, go home, drink some gin and relax. Oh, and could you mind this length of rope for me and these straight edged razor blades? Cheers, mate!"

And off he toddled into the night. I just tried ringing him but there's no answer. He must have it on silent in the hospital waiting room.

...to what the Potato Man said.

He's dead right.

Fair play to the Garda chief who hit out at the hypocrisy of motorists who think an increased police presence will cut deaths on the roads.

People bleat day in day out about how the Gardai should do more and that the government should do more but at the end of the day if people drove better there wouldn't be half the accidents there are. Lots of accidents would be avoided if people didn't drive like absolute cunts most of the time. How often has some wanker come driving right up your arse flashing his lights for you to move out of the way on a dual carriageway or motorway?

Ok, that in itself is not going to cause an accident but the prick who drives like that will. At some point he'll pull that stunt on a normal road or he'll go overtaking where he has no business to be overtaking and he'll plough into an oncoming car or, if we're lucky, he'll just smash into a wall or a ditch and die roaring on his own.

How many times has someone shot past you going like a fucking express train only for you, who is driving normally, to pull up beside him at the next set of traffic lights? Don't you feel like getting out of your car and kicking his fucking lights in? That shit drives me fucking mental.

In the country there's some 'blame' to be put on the roads which are narrow and windy but I know people who live down there who drive those roads like a rally driver. There's barely room for one car so when two of them meet at a decent speed, often late at night, then the consequences are inevitable.

Then there's drink. No matter what people say there's still a culture of drinking and driving in Ireland. It happens in Dublin where people's local is a half a mile away so it certainly happens in the country when people have to drive to get to the bar they want to go to. They might think they're all right and maybe in the great scheme of things they're not 'drunk' but it makes a difference.

Penalty points are grand, if that's your thing, but the 31 new offences last week didn't make any difference to the dozen or so people that were killed in car crashes since they were introduced.

We need less whingeing about lack of police that and government this and more common sense. If people took a bit more responsibility, drove better, didn't drink when they drove and were more conscientious then we wouldn't lose so many lives on the roads each week.

It's not fucking rocket science but then too many people think it can't happen to them. Just wait, fuckers, just wait.

Update: The Minister for Transport unveils new road safety measures including on the spot fines for drink drivers - "Give us €100 and off you go then. Drive straight now!", a ban on handheld mobile phones - can't argue with that - and privatisation of speed cameras which is going to become, after the M50, the single greatest rip off in Ireland, mark my words. It means the cameras are not being run to improve road safety, they're being run for profit.

I was reading some blog the other day, can't remember which one, and they had a link to this site. I'd rather have ended up looking at pictures of Mary Harney's arse being pummeled by a Romanian with a pneumatic AIDS cock. It's all about people who call themselves 'Freegans'.

Listen to this: "Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, we avoid buying anything to the greatest degree we are able. The word freegan is derived from 'free' and 'vegan'."

Now, vegetarians are bad enough but vegans are horrendous, pasty-faced, sickly people who are in urgent need of a good steak. They have disgusting hair and translucent skin because they lack protein that you can only get from a t-bone or pork chop.

Combine a minging vegan with some cunt who refuses to buy any products and what you've got is a cunt that should live on a commune with some chickens to lay eggs, goats for milk and all the shite that they talk to fertilise their plants.

Then there's this: "Perhaps the most notorious freegan strategy is what is commonly called "urban foraging" or "dumpster diving". This technique involves rummaging through the garbage of retailers, residences, offices, and other facilities for useful goods."

You might call it 'urban foraging', you scabby cunts, but I call it bin dipping. You might think you're being all environmentally friendly but in actual fact you're no better than a bag-lady or some kind of tramp or a Scouser. Disgusting bastards trawling through people's rubbish looking for food or a half-used carton of banana milk or old appliances or an overcoat that has sick and cum stains all over it. Dirty, dirty scumbags. Rats go through people's rubbish so Freegans are like rats except much worse because they're also like tramps and bag-ladies and rats aren't like that. I suspect Freegans carry more diseases than rats too.

Freegans also object to paying rent because it gives money to evil landlords so they take over boarded up houses or vacant premises. So not only are they sickly, pasty-faced, bin dipping, shite talking hobos they're squatters as well and we all know squatters are fucking cunts, stealing electricity from other houses, defecating on the floor and rubbing it on the walls and they're a burden on the health care system when they all get pneumonia and the plague from living in freezing, unsanitary conditions in the winter.

Here's the best bit though: "Work means sacrificing our freedom to take orders from someone else, stress, boredom, monotony, and in many cases risks to our physical and psychological well-being."

So, to sum up they want everything for nothing, they're not averse to eating your left-overs or wearing the clothes you throw away, they occupy private property that they have no right to be in, they stink like Paris Hilton's gee and they refuse to work because it contributes the economy and they want us to treat them like humans and respect their choices? Fuck that. What they are is downright lazy. I had a cousin who refused to work as well. Not out of any lifestyle choice but simply because he was a lazy cunt. He got enormously blimpy from sitting around and eating Mr Kipling French Fancies and watching daytime TV - then he went into a diabetic coma, the fat fuck. Anyway, I digress. I bet these Freegans aren't too lazy to go pick up their dole and other benefits though.

"Oooooh look! Me and my life partner have had two disgusting little urchins which we delivered at home and bit the umbilical cord off with our teeth then had placenta on toast for a week so give me my children's allowance", is what I imagine they'd say and that's being kind to them. You have to feel sorry for the kids because no doubt the mother has plaited pubic hair and she used the lice that live there as their first meal. It's too late for them now, of course.

These fuckers need to be rounded up and told 'Join in or fuck off and by fuck off we mean we're going to kill you'.

If there were enough of them I suppose we could burn them to create electricity to power the saw which cuts the cow in half and the machine which wraps the pieces of meat in environmentally 'friendly' cling film and the freezers in the supermarket where I buy the cow and my oven or grill which cooks the cow.

Mmmmmm, thanks Freegans for this delicious fare. Tastes so much better because I know some of you died so I could enjoy it.

Seriously though, they're just hippies crossed with crusties crossed with Green party members wrapped in a can't-be-arsed, germ covered bubble of indolent, shifless, parasitic sloth. It should be legal to kill them on sight.

Let this be a warning. The first Freegan I see in Dublin I am going to string him up by his bollocks from the Five Lamps and stone the cunt to death.

I've just remembered that last night I dreamt I was writing a screenplay which was absolute dynamite. 'Twenty the Movie' would have been just around the corner awaiting a Christmas release (it had to be finished by the end of October so they could start shooting in January).

Even in my dream I remember thinking 'Ooooh, you better remember this when you wake up' but, of course, I didn't.

Arse.

Update: I remembered! However, it was fucking shit. Carry on.

iPods and stuff are great, aren't they? I've been having lots of the fun with the iPod Nano I won. It's tiny and I can fit something like 1,000 songs on it. It weighs a few grams and I can take it anywhere. I can choose what songs to put on it, I can take some off, put some others on, make up playlists and all kinds of jiggery-pokery.

However, there's just something about digital music collections that doesn't compare with having something physical.

I have in my home a very large collection of albums, 7" singles and 12" singles on vinyl. Ok, I can't take 1,000 songs with me while I'm taking a bus or sitting in a pub reading a book but I have a collection. I have something I can pick up and look at and store in nice ways or even untidy ways. People have come to my house and said 'My goodness, look how many records you have. You're even cooler than I first thought, Twenty!' because there's no escaping them.

If I had a 60gb iPod which I assume would have a 15,000 song capacity and it was full to the brim people wouldn't look at it and say 'Wow! What a lot of music you have'. They'd probably just say nothing and think 'Oh, another cunt with an iPod'.

I know people who read books and pass them on like old newspapers but I also know people who collect them like precious gems. They know which book goes where on which bookshelf and would no more part with one of them than they would with their right arm.

It all boils down to the fact that having lots of stuff is cool and having lots of digital stuff is also cool but nowhere near as cool as having something you can stack, sort or cram into various spaces.

Vinyl is also a cool thing to collect as it sounds better than CD and I don't care what anyone says. God be with the days when I used to trawl the second hand record shops in Dublin looking for rarities. Freebird was the first stop, generally, and there was the George's St arcade but there was one on Wicklow Street/Exchequer Street that used to be deadly. Can't remember the name of it though - it might have been Record Collector - but that's where I bought my replacement original 7" of David Bowie's Space Oddity after Dirty Dave had drunkenly used the one I actually bought in 1969 as a coaster.

I thrashed him to within an inch of his life, let me tell you.

Yesterday a fucking scumbag from Corduff, shown spitting his way into court, was jailed for 7 years (with the last 3 suspended) for an assault on a man outside his own home. The man, foolishly, tried to stop a group of scumbags from stealing his car while his son's first birthday party was going on inside. They beat him so badly he was in a coma for 6 weeks. He is lucky to be alive but at least he is alive.

Unlike Robert Houlihan who was murdered, sorry, manslaughtered by student Wayne O'Donoghue. O'Donoghue then dumped the body, went home and played Playstation then went out again and moved the body of Robert Houlihan somewhere else before pouring petrol on him and burning the corpse. He got a 4 year sentence.

There's something very wrong there. Now, I'm not suggesting the scumbag who beat the guy into a coma should be given a lesser sentence but maybe, just maybe, the lad who killed a boy of 11, dumped the charred body in a ditch, played Playstation and went about his business while a frantic 10 day (I think) search went on merits slightly more than the 4 years he was given.

And those are just two examples of many. We have paedophiles being given 1 year sentences for years of buggery and sexual assault on minors, people who download child porn getting away with a fine like that's supposed to be some kind of punishment and a man being given a 4 year sentence for rape and threatening to kill his victim with the judge saying "it was only rape".

The main problem, as far as I can see, is that most judges are hapless cretins who are so far removed from reality that when asked to actually do the judging part of their jobs they're fucking shit at it. They're the ones who decide the sentences so how is they get it so wrong so often?

If you went out on the street tomorrow and conducted a poll asking what a suitable punishment might be for a member of the clergy who systematically abused young boys over a period of 40 years I think a lot of people might choose:

b) 10 years in jail - or
c) 20 years in jail and having his bollocks chopped off.

I suspect that only other members of the clergy would choose:

a) 1 year which in reality won't even be one year.

Yes, there are people who have an input into the sentencing but in the end it is left to the discretion of the judge. Maybe we need to introduce fixed sentences for various crimes:

Rape - 10 years
Murder - life, where life means life
Armed robbery - 10 years
Child abuse - 20 years and castration

All the above used as examples of course. That way if a judge has a child molester in his court he can't give him a pathetic sentence or he can't let a rapist off with a 4 year suspended sentence because "it was only rape." Let him get sodomised by a man with an enormous cock and see then whether he might be inclined to dish out a meatier sentence.

If that doesn't work (the fixed sentences, not the judge raping) then maybe sentencing needs to be decided by people who actually have some connection with the real world. In fact, my God, why didn't we think of this sooner?

A TV3 news style poll:

If you'd like this kiddie fiddling piece of shit sentenced to 10 years text 54310, 20 years txt 54312 and if you'd like us to cut his meat and two veg off as well txt 54311.

Anyway, fuck it. We're all going to die of bird flu in the end.

In Ron's last night.

"Here Twenty, where where you Tuesday afternoon? I was trying to get hold of you for ages", said Stinking Pete.

"Er, I was at home. Sleeping. Heavy night on Monday, you know yourself."

"Is that right?"

"It is."

"It's just that my cousin, Dumpy Donald, swears he saw you and Jimmy driving past his house in Donegal."

"Donegal? Now what the fuck would I be doing in Donegal on Tuesday afternoon?"

"It's a very good question, isn't it? Anyway, Mick... informed... me that he... spied... you and Jimmy driving along and that you...shot....past him and pulled into a secret... service station just down the road from his house. And although he couldn't see what went on their his youngest lad, Dermot, was filling up his car. Donald's Son says he overheard the conversation with the lad working there and when he asked you if you wanted a... hand... with anything you said 'Sure, we have more than we know what to do with."

"That's a gas story. Your cousin, he's an alcoholic right?"

"No, he's a lifelong pioneer. Wears the badge and everything."

"Then he must have been working on his farm around some 10-10-20 and inhaled the fumes. He was obviously seeing things."

"He's a graphic designer who works at home."

"Tippex thinner?"

"Come on now, Twenty. I might not be the sharpest tool in the box but you're not fooling me."

"Jaysus. Fair enough, Pete, but keep your mouth fucking shut. Do you hear me? If you breathe of a word of this to anyone there'll be so much fucking shit we are all going to have to disappear for a long time. Seriously Pete, not a word to anyone. ANYONE. Right?"

"Come ooooooon, Twenty, what sort of a cunt do you take me for?"

"Grand. Pint, Pete?"

"I will, Twenty. Just going to take a piss."

*unzip* - *tinkle*- *flip* - * bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep *

*bring bring*

"Hello?"

"Dave, it's me, Pete?"

"Ahh, howya Pete. What's the story?"

"Listen, don't let on you know but I think Twenty and Jimmy are planning a poker weekend away in Bundoran for us!!"

I know this is hardly breaking news but I watched their 5.30 bulletin yesterday and was compelled to write about it. Having a bit of background in journalism myself (I have a wealth of experience in many areas, dontcha know) it is almost like watching some kind of broadcasting diploma class get their own TV station for a week. That's what their news would look like except it probably wouldn't be as bad.

They reported on the bus crash in Offaly yesterday in which a 15 year old boy was killed and lots of others injured. A serious thing. A tragic thing for the family of the boy in question as he was an only child. The reporter, Jerome Hughes I think his name was, finished one section of his report as such:

The impact on the roof of the bus was terrible but not as terrible as the impact that losing a life will be on this community.

Now there's a time and place for word play and even a time and place for corny segues into the next part of a report but this line was delivered deadpan with a shot of the crumpled bus lying on its roof with the back wheels 10 yards away. My toes curled. Fucking hell.

Then they cut away to one of the hospitals where the injured were taken and showed us one of the young lads on the bus break down in tears. Cretinous, tabloid journalism at its worst. We know they're upset, you shitehawks. They've seen a schoolmate die and others get injured and they've been involved in a traumatic incident, you don't need to show us the poor bloke crying. Have a bit of fucking common sense and decency.

Then, because they obviously hadn't got enough stories about no-mark celebrities or kittens stuck in trees, they went back to Jerome Hughes live and he was interviewing an ambulance officer. This is the question he asked them - "So how important is it that you guys keep your cool in situations like this?"

Fuck me. How the guy resisted the urge to say "Well, it's hard but we find running around screaming "OH JESUS LOOK AT HIS LEG! IT'S FUCKED. AND OH, THAT BLOKE'S GUTS ARE COMING OUT OF HIS ARSE. HE'S GOT NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL. I THINK I'M GOING TO VOMIT RIGHT AFTER I SHIT MYSELF. WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO??!!!" tends to unsettle the accident victims", I will never know.

It's like asking a pilot "So how important is it that you don't fly your plane into the side of a mountain?"

Moronic and shameless and just horribly amateurish. I know they operate out of portacabins on an industrial estate but still, surely they can think of a better question to ask than that.

Leaving that particular report aside there's the vapid Lorraine Keane and her entertainment fluff which is about as insightful as Stevie Wonder with his head up Ray Charles's arse, the weird and scary Ursula Hannigan with her bizarre intonation, the ever increasing waistline of 'weatherman' Martin King who does the weather then reads out requests like a 1980s pirate radio DJ and they're as bad as Sky News for their interactive poles polls which if I ever find the time I will shove up their fucking holes, the cunts.

TV3 news can fuck off until they stop being shit. So that's forever then....

I read this about the UK leg of Madonna's upcoming world tour:

"Members of Madonna's fan club Icon can buy tickets from Tuesday at 1000 BST. Ticket prices range from £80 to £160."

Are people insane or something? Are there really people who would spend £160 watching that leathery old cunt do her scary dancing and whistling between the gap in her teeth?

Every day we see news about people starving in Zimbabwe, suicide bombers in Iraq and countless other horrific things all over the world but this truly makes me despair of mankind.

What have we become?

Come on you truckers! It seems the Irish Road Haulage Association has organised a protest which will disrupt traffic at the East Link toll bridge on Wednesday morning. They say they shouldn't have to pay a toll to get access to the new port tunnel (which should be open in about 5 years time when it stops leaking).

Personally I couldn't care less but I like their thinking and I believe that if it's successful it must immediately be applied to the West Link toll bridge, which I have mentioned before as the biggest rip off in the country.

Yesterday 31 new driving offences were introduced which result in penalty points on your licence and fines for parking offences were increased but day after day after week after month after year the West Link toll bridge is allowed to cause more traffic problems than anybody staying longer than the 2 hours allocated or parking in a handicapped space.

I'd wager a lot of the deaths on our roads are the direct result of people having to queue for ages to get through a toll bridge which was designed to help traffic not hinder it.

Mickey J from Ratoath has to go to Sandyford to work every day. He crosses the toll bridge twice a day. He sits in a crawl to go over and a crawl to come back. Then he reaches a relatively quiet stretch of road and he is frustrated. He wants to feel like he's actually driving so he puts his foot down a bit, misses a sharp turn and smashes head on into a Nissan Micra killing everyone. Yes, Mickey J is culpable but had he been able to get across the M50 motorway in a decent time instead of wasting hours of his life each week this accident could have been avoided.

Larry travels from Ballinteer to Santry each day. Having experienced the jams on the M50 because of the toll bridge he leaves really early every morning. At 6.30am he's out the door so he can get to work early, do his stuff then leave early before the traffic gets too mental. He's ahead of the game. Sadly he's also ahead of two Blanchardstown gang members in their silver Lexus who are off their brains having been up all night snorting the coke they sell around town. In their paranoid state they convince themselves that Larry's car is following them even though they're behind him so they pull up alongside him and fire a dozen shots through the windows, killing Larry and causing his car to veer across the lanes, hitting another car and 5 people end up dead. If Larry had been able to leave home at a normal hour instead of having to go so early to avoid the traffic jams he and 5 other people would be alive. Who is to blame? The toll bridge, that's who.

'But what about the accidents down the country?', you might ask. Based on research I carried out 97% of those accidents can be traced back to the toll bridge on the M50. A man dies in Donegal when his car hits a tree. A little further investigation shows he had spent the evening in the local pub with a cousin of one of his friends who goaded him into drinking that 'one more pint' and because the guy was moaning and complaining about the toll bridge he accepted because it would make him more bearable.

Three Lithuanians steal a car in Mallow and within 10 minutes they're dead because they've gone racing and flown over a hump-backed bridge at 90mph (that's some other much higher number in kph but I fucking hate kilometers), the car has taken off and landed in somebody's front room. How is that connected to the M50? There's an easy explanation. It just is.

So while the Gardai fuck about with 31 more driving offences (unbelievably one of them is breaking a red light like that wasn't dangerous before somehow) the real cause of the carnage on Ireland's roads goes unchecked.

Banana republic, indeed. So come on my trucker friends, my good buddies, get the hammer down, forget the bears at your back and listen to my 10-44. Let's put an end to that cash register once and for all.

10-4, Twenty. 10-4

...that's getting dozens of spams a day from 'Chase Online Banking'?

It doesn't matter how many times the cunts ask for my bank details they will not wear me down.

Saturday night was card night round at mine. One week we'll have it in Dave's, the next Jimmy's, then Ron's but never in Stinking Pete's because his house smells of death. I keep telling him to do something about the corpses but he just won't listen.

Anyway, Dave was a bit late arriving and he was the one who was supposed to bring the beers. I nipped out to the off-licence and got a couple of trays of beer because we were all very thirsty and a grown man should never have to wait for beer.

We couldn't ring Dave either because he refuses to get a mobile phone. "Mobile phones are for cunts. If someone really wants to talk to me then can send me a telegram or a messenger boy."

We got tucked in and waited for our dirty friend to arrive. About an hour later there was a ring on the door.

"Allllll reeeeeeeet, laaaaaaads!", said Dirty Dave.

"Where the fuck have you been? And you'd better have brought beer."

"No beer but I'm after winning 6 bottles of Baileys in a raffle."

"Baileys? What kind of a ponce do you take me for? Lucky for you I got some beer. Come on in and we'll get the card game started."

So in he came and we got down to drinking, smoking and gambling, life's most civilised pursuits. As he arrived late Dave was on beer fetching duty so he went back and forward to the kitchen, where my trusty hound Bastardface was snoozing in front of the gas fire, to keep us refreshed.

After about an hour I heard a strange noise from the kitchen. If you can imagine the noise a walrus might make if it was being raped by a gnu that's more or less what it sounded like.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Er...dunno", said Dirty Dave. "Probably the wind or something."

So we carried on. Then I heard Bastardface whining. He often does this when he's asleep in front of the fire. I always imagine that he's chasing a cat or a Romanian or something. Anyway, we carried on playing and Dave carried on fetching the beer. It was while he was fetching the beer that I heard that sound again so I went into the kitchen to check it out.

What I saw was Dirty Dave pouring Baileys into a bowl and Bastardface greedily lapping it up.

"Dave, what the fuck are you doing?"

"Er...just giving me old pal Bastardy a drink, Twenty."

"Dogs drink water, Dave. Or milk. Or possibly a cup of tea, but not Baileys. How much have you given him?"

"Not much."

"Show me the bottle, Dave."

He handed me a bottle.

"Not one of the full ones, the one you've been giving him stuff from."

He handed me another bottle. There was at least half of it gone. Bastardface had finished the bowl and was now, nose to floor, pushing himself round and round with his hind legs making the whale/gnu sound and farting the most vile, stinking farts you have ever smelled.

"Dave, you are a fucking gobshite and no mistake. My dog is as pissed a common Oliver Reed."

"Well, I thought he might just like a wee nip."

"I'll give you a wee nip only it'll be some little cunt to ninja the shite out of you."

I put Bastardface out the back where he proceeded to leap around and chase non-existent owls. At the time he was a happy drunk and would certainly have been like 'Yer me besht matesh and I love yish all' but as well all know that can easily that change to 'Whaddafuckyalookinat?' which is normally followed by a headbutt or badly swung punch.

However, in this case it would have meant him chomping somebody's bollocks or eating their face off. He is enormous and he has jaws that can bite through titanium. Bastardface can be cranky at the best of times. Him being in a fouler because of a skinful of a whiskey cream liquor was something I could actually live without and there just wasn't enough time to let him loose on a halting site.

Naturally I put Dave out the back with him...

...an Irish political blog worth reading.

...I've just given up smoking.

Edit: As the eagle eyed amongst you have noticed that was a very early April Fool's gag. The truth is I've never been a smoker at all.

Further edit: In fact I'm a lawyer involved in class action suits against the tobacco companies.

Even further edit: Fuck that, it's past 12 noon. Mmmmmm, Majory goodness.

I'm smoking 6 at the same time.

Final edit: April Fools jokes, without massive resources and possibly some tactical weapons, are pretty useless.