Posts
Gin hangover
-
I was at a party on Saturday night that was equivalent to a Benetton
advertisement. My reason for being there, I had in the previous few weeks
fallen in wi...
7 hours ago
Most recent Articles
Gin hangover
Monday, 20 July 2009
I was at a party on Saturday night that was equivalent to a Benetton advertisement. My reason for being there, I had in the previous few weeks fallen in with a click of American students taking a summer in Dublin as interns. I was the token Irish guy, I was also the oldest person there. I am 32, I was seeing, until about 5 am that morning, a 22 yr old American Intern.
I drank a lot. Drunk on a steady mix of Gin, a cheap brand of German Pils from Aldi and whatever else I stumbled upon whilst rolling my cigarettes on the glass dining table. It was during these moments, the red swan rolling paper clutched between index finders and supported by thumbs, that I ventured to discuss whatever was on my mind with whomever was sitting at the table.
Faces passed in a parade of passport photos. The introductions trickled along like a queue at customs. Where are you from? Why are you here? What do you do? Swiss, Italian, Colombian, English, German, Dutch, American and French. There was me, Irish, but for the most part of the night I didn’t talk to myself.
Don’t go pick fruit in Monaghan was my advice to a Swiss 18 yr old with a beautiful face and a lip ring. Ah Madrid, I was there recently..the food was shit was my commentary on Spain given for the benefit of the Colombian moving to Madrid. What the fuck do you mean you are Italian I exclaimed to an Italian ( I made him show me some ID) who spoke with a distinct Mayo accent. The evening rolled on. I was making friends, I got drunker and lost them as quickly as I made them.
The evening didn’t seem to include the American Intern that I had actually gone to the party to see. She seemed dramatically less enamored with me since I had last seen her, pulling on her jeans on the previous Friday evening. But I didn’t care. I have in my repertoire only a certain amount of charm, humour and idiosyncratic but well pointed observations (well sprinkled with historical facts and plagerised from better writers) and I suspect that without any new material my charming Irish facasde has been breached, and the drawn grey reality of an Irish man 10 years her senior had been exposed.
Drunk and making conversation, a spirited way to spend an evening. I was stumbling by half two, drunkenly leering into a camera phone at half three, swapping numbers with a Korean chick at half four, arguing with American Intern at half five, in a Taxi by Half six, asleep by seven.
Sunday morning, and a Gin hangover choked me, stuffing my head back into the pillow, the light from a bright afternoon scalded my eyes. The repeat of the menu music on a Jerry Maguire DVD played over and over, driving me to the edge, my limbs unable to seek out the remote, nor summon the energy to put my foot through the TV.
Posted by Geraco C Monday, July 20, 2009 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Drunk on Gin
Eircom is hacked, fair reward for selling out internet freedom
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
So Eircom has been hacked twice. Is this the revenge of an outraged Internet community after Eircom sold out so easily to the legal pressure of Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma)?
On July the 7th an Eircom DNS server was corrupted and the settings amended. DNS servers take urls and change them into IP addresses and back again. If a user types in www.rte.com..the DNS server links that with ip address 89.207.58.70, which the server then understands as address to which to send the user. The hack on the 7th of July apparently changed how the server saw the IP address of RTE, Facebook or Bebo. Users were redirected to incorrect websites, often displaying images of advertising or scantily clad women. Nice hack.
Example of DNS hack on PaypalAnd so yesterday and we see a DDOS - distributed denial of service attack..basically finding a port that takes requests from other servers / computers and lacks the ability to stop the requests and so sending millions of requests that overload the system.. Many of the service's 500,000 subscribers who tried to browse the web were unable to access popular sites and email accounts. Others experienced long delays and faults....Another nice hack..
So who is doing it..kiddie scripters, seasoned hackers, Piratebay advocates? Forces for freedom on the internet? Me.. You.. whomever it is, one suspects that the motive is, hopefully, more to do with making a stern and dynamic point to Eircom.
And what is the point...well Eircom let themselves be bullied into stopping their users visiting piratebay and other torrent sites. The bully came in the form of Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma).. a pathetic and weak lapdog in the pay of the IFPI (the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).
Irma bought Eircom to court. Eircom folded. Users of the internet from all over the world looked on in disbelief.. Our internet freedoms were suddenly under attack by commercial entities. ( legal entities, country laws etc etc are fine if you ask me.. but access to the sites such as child porn, drugs sites etc should be dealt with in a legal manner,... close down the site, arrest those who use those types of sites, but don't block user access.. have faith that human morals are as present and involved in the decisions made by a user on the internet as in real life..)
While many may have little favour with torrent sites, the internet is a free platform that works as a free social community that runs as a reflection of real society. As with real society, good and bad, legal and illegal are present. Life is about choice, Freedom is about choice.. You can not make someone be good.. they have to choose to be..otherwise they are just following orders.
The social and commercial aspects of the web rely on the freedom that is a paramount virtue of the internet ethos. A commercial third party telling ISP's, the toll booths of the internet, that people cannot go to a specific location in order that the commercial party can protect their interests is one huge step on a very slippy slope.
The fact that Eircom folded over, to paraphrase, like a cheap hooker, and eagerly handed away one of the core pillars of the internet experience has annoyed a lot of people.. me included.
I suspect that Eircom is reaping what it sowed and I have no sympathy or their users, who should have canceled their subscription the second Eircom took their place with North Korea and China on the top ten list of assholes against internet freedom... Pleasant and fitting company for a pussy like Eircom.
Posted by Geraco C Wednesday, July 15, 2009 1 comments Links to this post
Labels: Eircom suck
Virgin Mary takes break from long holiday to appear in a fucken tree.
Saturday, 11 July 2009
Sub Headline
Virgin Tree Stump has come to SAVE THE WORLD FROM the recession, swine flu, reality tv, smelly feet, etc etc..
Sub - Sub Headline
Ireland to ban playboy, contraception, having sex whilst standing up and rock music as it turns back time to become an oppressive catholic state because people like god..
Sub - sub - sub Headline
Virgin found in Limerick..Local priest says " FUCK OFF. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKEN SHITTING ME!"
In the top ten list of amusing instances of , what shrinks call, “Group polarisation”, the act of people with similar opinions meeting up and collectively finding an extreme viewpoint that’s didn’t in any way represent the individual opinions prior to the discussion, Religion is up there with the mass hysteria of Beatlemania, although, granted, Beatlemania had a lot more respect for children.
Rathkeale in Limerick is playing host to a tree that looks like the Virgin Mary. Thousands of people are travelling, and by travelling I mean they are actually going to the effort of putting on shoes, walking to their car, turning the engine on and driving to Rathkeale to pay homage to a tree stump..
The stump in question was discovered by some workmen who were doing a spot of gardening. Apparently the Virgin Mary had taken time out, from her maternal quest to find Jesus a nice women, in order to have her image entombed in a tree. Mary is Jewish, and Jewish moms, deities or not, want grandchildren, and to be honest Mary has been waiting over 2000 years for the pitter patter of the tiny floating feet of God’s grandchildren.. ( lol GOD godfather ..etc).. so randomly placing her image on slices of toast, in cheezpuffs and on tree stumps, as part of her graphic design and marketing Adult education course, is a nice distraction from her maternal heartbreak. ( “AAAh Jeebus.. when you gonna find a nice Girl oh youa breaka my heart.. you shoulda married that nice Mary Magdalene”)
Presumably she created this spiritual graffiti at some point in the last 20 years..which meant that she had to wait that whole period before her little self portrait was revealed to a recession riddled Ireland. She really must have the patience of a Saint.. literally.
As a marketing ploy one suspects that Mary will be getting an A for her project as she is right back up on the red tops message of the week. Thus,embarrassingly, this story is being reported all around the world.. and it already looks like that out of date footage one sees on Reeling in the Years.. you know the one where you have a middle aged lady in a head scarf giving out about the government making contraception legal..
we can look at it now and think ..ah sure weren’t we all a bit weird in this country in the 80’s.. well the weirdness is back.. and Ireland once again is appearing on the world stage wearing a collective head scarf and a stupid almost manic grin whilst telling the world that
“ yeah sure we might be trying to portray the country as a hot bed of technological evolution.. but sure at the same time.. we are pretty sure that the Virgin Mary lives in a tree stump in Limerick.. blessed be the Holy mother..and ban all things gay..”. I cringe..the entire country should be walking around with one bright collective blush.. a blush so bright that astronomers from other planets are trying to figure out what the fuck is happening to the small blue planet that everyone stays away from on account of their amusing, although dangerous belief in imaginary agents of good and evil…
The reaction of the general religious populace in Limerick and surrounding counties is hysteria, and reminds me somewhat of the collective expulsion of urine carried out by Teenage girls at Beatles concerts in the 60’s. Believe it or believe it not but probably the worst job in history was the poor bastard that had to approach, with bucket and mop in hand, the urine soaked cinema seats of a post Beatles concert venue.
Back then before the WII children really need to work to amuse themselves. It is widely reported in the press of the time that Teenage girls spent a greater period of the concert stuffing their hands, up to their elbows, into their mouths, bizarrely punching themselves in their sides and peeing everywhere. Such was their reaction and such is the reaction of the religious fans of Mary in Rathkeale.. While collective urination may not be as apparent, there is certainly a collective explusion of bullshit.
Despite the fact that no one in public office actually cares if the tree is removed or not, I mean it is in the garden of a church, it is not as if a motorway is waiting to go through, a petition has been created that has, apparently, thousands of signatures.
The local gobshite Noel White, chairman of Rathkeale Community Council, is rather militantly stating
“I won't be removing it. Nobody here wants it removed. Anyone who wants this taken away won't be able to get anyone local to cut it down,"He then pulled out a sword and screamed
“And if anyone fucken tries to remove this potential tourist goldmine.. um I mean… significant religious relic, we are going to cut off his fucken ears and offer them as a sacrifice to the Magnificent Virgin Mary( A virgin in Limerick.. really!!). Ok I may have subtly embellished the last bit..
Anyway so a petition has been raised although no one is actually quite sure who to give it to. Maybe they will send it me after I publish this article.
The actual sensible ones in this whole national vomit fest are the local priests. “
There’s nothing there, it’s just a tree. You can’t worship a tree. A tree is a tree. A person with imagination is a person with imagination.”said local parish priest Father Willie Russell. Nice one Willie.. although this sane view of it was somewhat tempered by Noel White, speedily becoming the joker that you will see in 2020 when they release reeling in the years for 2009, who stated that
“If it is left there I would imagine we would have to get expert advice on how to preserve it,”. “People are taking bits off the tree or stroking the tree and taking the skin off. If they keep doing that there’ll be nothing there soon.”
Jesus fucken christ..sometimes I hate the people in this country..
Posted by Geraco C Saturday, July 11, 2009 1 comments Links to this post
Labels: virgin in limerick shocker
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
