Bird’s eye view? Don’t cod me.

Before you read further, educate yourself and check out fish you shouldn’t eat

Done reading? Good.

A little background. I am a wildlife nut, I have been since I was a little boy. I was raised and went to school in the country. I can recognise many different types of flora and fauna. I believe that man can live in harmony with his environment. I am not, and will likely never be, a vegan or vegetarian. I wear leather goods. I live in a third floor apartment, have a pet cat, and keep a fish tank. I am not a member of any animal rights groups. So what’s my beef? Cod.

In November 1975 a cod war began between England and Iceland. This was the third war, the first in 1958, the second in ‘72 – ’73.
If it were a league table it would look something like this:

Country	Win	Lose	Draw	Points
Iceland	1	1	1	10,000
England	1	1	1	4

You may notice that the points table is skewed in Iceland’s favour. Why? Because the points system changed in the 1978, to 9,999 for a win and Iceland won the third Cod war.

All the wars were over Cod fishing rights. Large fleets of ships were mobilised on each side. In the ‘75 war the British were not convinced that over-fishing was destroying cod, the Icelanders were, and started enforcing a 200 mile limit on there waters. In the previous settlement, the limit was set at 50 miles, with certain areas within the limit that British trawlers could fish. War began. Eight months later, June ’76, Iceland played their trump card. Stop fishing our waters, or a NATO presence in Iceland will no longer be welcome. Iceland won, Britain sold off a staggering 60% of its fishing territory rights.

Interesting History! Fast forward 30 years.

Iceland’s cod is flourishing. Only line caught cod is allowed. They have lots, enough to export. Britain has not so much, so little in fact that North Sea cod are number one on the fish endangered species list. Time is the great rewriter of history, but it is amazing to see now how stunningly short sighted the British fishing policy was (and still is). No cod, ports closed, still too high limits allowed, continentals raping their waters.

What prompted this interest? Bird’s eye. You’ve seen the ad. Eat hoki! You’ve eaten all the cod. We’re making hoki into fish fingers now, eat them! Scour, rape and pillage another body of water.

For God’s sake people! Think! If you can’t think check out this list. Eat responsibly. Live in harmony with the environment.

Do you have issues?

Bah. Straight to letter.

“Dear RTE Newsreaders,

There is no such thing as an issyous. There are issues. If you are having problems think of the verb ‘be’, third person singular present tense, to wit: ‘is.’ O.K? With me so far? Add an aitch. Not a haitch. This gives you an ‘ish’, pronounced like dish without the ‘d.’ End of step 1. Now look at your feet. What’s covering them? Yep, Shoes. End of step 2. Now put step 1 and 2 together. Ishshoes. Say it faster. Issues. End of step 3.

Now that that ishshoe is cleared up, lets tackle another controversy. Look at the last word in the preceeding sentence. No, that’s not how you pronounce it. Say again? Con-Trov-Es-E. Yep. Wrong. Good work with the first syllable though, we’ll keep that. Con. End of step 1. Next, think throw, but without the aitch, like you are in Drogheda. Tro. Con-Tro. End of step 2. Next, think poetry or Shakespeare. Verse. Easy huh? Con-Tro-Verse. Next (you’ll like this), keep your final syllable, you were half right all along! E. That’s it. Con-Tro-Verse-E. ConTroVerseE. Speed it up. Controversy.

Here endith the lesson. I am not a crank.

Yours etc.,”

New Years Resolutions... admittedly belated but hey.....who really cares.

Lifestyle
Lose weight
Get Fit
Cut down on the drink
Give up caffine

Fishing... I am obsessed
catch a salmon
fish every week in season
teach someone to flyfishLearn to tie flies

Reading...not a complete list but you get the idea...less brain rot this year.
A History of Western Philosophy (Bertrand Russell)
Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith)
The Rights of Man (Thomas Paine)
Age of Reason (Thoma Paine)
Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo)
Age of Consent (George Monbiot)
The Odessey (Homer)
Dracula (Bram Stoker)
Gullivers Travels (Jonathan Swift)
The Prince (Machiavelli)
Don Quixote (Cervantes)
Origin of Species (Darwin)
Inferno (Dante)

Misc
Learn to play the Guitar
Learn to shoot
Have a letter published in the irish times
Play poker in a casino
Ask a stranger out on a date
Stop cursing
Stop being such a pervert
Stop gambling

Already failed this year on.....
Giving up the drink till Paddys Day!

Argos? Naught

For those that don’t know Argos is a large British retail chain store. It sells everything you may ever need at budget prices. Your typical customer experience will go something like this:

Arrive at Argos
Look at a catalogue to find the product you want
Check to see if the product you want is in stock
Choose a more expensive version of the product you were originally looking for
Check to see if the product you don’t really want, but are going to buy instead of the product you want is in stock.
Fill out a form with the catalogue number
Pay at the fully staffed checkout counter
Get given a docket with three numbers; your customer no., your queue no. and your estimated delivery time (T + 10 minutes)
Ten minutes later get called to your queue, jam in beside the people already there
Wait
Twenty minutes later get half your order
Wait
Banter with the other folk about how shit the service is.
Wait
Product turns up
Leave, swearing that you’ll never shop in Argos again.

It’s a perfect model for Argos. Make sure the service is swift when you have to pay up front, and then remove all semblance of service completely, knowing that the customer won’t leave because he has paid. I should send a letter to their general manager.

“Dear Argus,

While dying of boredom in your shop today I composed this letter in my head. The Argos was the ship that Jason sailed to find the golden fleece in. The shipbuilder named the ship after himself, thus I presume your name is Argus. Atalanta sailed on the ship as well. Is she your wife? She is probably the manageress of Atlantic homecare.

But I digress.

You do many things correctly in your shop. You stock many quality products that are easy to find in your free catalogue. You make it easy to pay. You offer a 16 day, no fuss, money back guarantee if the product isn’t what I am looking for. You give Richard.E.Grant work. Yes, many good things, all at reasonable prices.

Alas, you do many, many bad things in your shop as well. Your customer service is shit. Your warehouse staff, are either untrained or lazy or both. Your warehouse manager should be horsewhipped. You should be made go to your own shop to buy something and realise what a truly miserable experience it is. While we’re at it, when you get your product home, you should be made build it. Some of the flat pack you sell must have been designed by Daedalus (your son?).

How do you fix this? How about this. The warehouse picking staff deliver all of your order at the same time. For every 5 minutes it is late €1 comes off the order. Stagger staff lunches. Hire competent warehouse managers, fire every single one currently in your employ (Ireland only). Hire floor managers. *Train them*. Stop your son from making furniture. Hire somebody to build the flat pack before you put it in your catalogue. Make anyone who buys a sovereign ring sign an offenders register.

Make all of these changes and consider me an Argonaut.
By the way, I am not a crank.

Yours etc.,"

For now, it’s back to looking at furniture before I buy it.

Nursery Crimes

I was sent a link by a friend to 'Global Rich List'. It’s a site that shows you how rich you are. I am very, very rich. In global terms there are approximately 6,000,000,000 people poorer then I am. Chances are if you are reading this, there are approximately 6,000m people poorer then you too.

Makes you think. Makes you think if I could earn what I earn now in a country with no economy and a terrible socio-economic outlook, I’d be king. God. God King.

I have made up some nursery rhymes to be taught in my numen-monarchy.

“God King Con,
Was a merry old soul,
And a merry old soul was he,
He called for anything he wanted;
And got it because he was rich.”

And

“The King was in his counting house,
Counting all his monets,
The Queen was in the parlour,
with all the other beauty queens,
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
Along came a blackbird
And pecked off her nose.
It’s easy to get a new maid.”

And a last one

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,
Did nothing because the king doesn’t reward stupidity.”

And people say the rich aren’t happy. Stupid unimaginative poor people. If I were rich, I’d be deliriously, irrationally, incoherently, happy. If course, I am rich. I just need to be elsewhere to realise it.

Cool Philter

Let me lay my cards on the table. I can’t abide Phil Coulter. He is the living physical embodiment of mediocrity. He strives to find the asinine in everything and then glorifies it. In saying that, I have never met him, he’s probably very nice. I hate that.

Where did it all go wrong? He wrote for Elvis (My Boy), the Bay City Rollers (Les McKeown rates the Coulter years as the Rollers finest!), Christy Moore (Ride on), Sinead O’Connor, Van Morrison, James Galway, and more, many many more. Now? Brian Kennedy, Ronan Keating, Ireland’s call, You’re a star. God. I don’t know if you’re still talking to Bill Martin, but if you are, get back together! Tell the new crowd you can’t stand the sight of them, like the rest of us. You were great man! Now you’re smashing guitars for a PR stunt and sitting beside Linda Martin and Louis Walsh. At least she’s in the middle, I don’t trust Louis either, he's beyond redemption.

Another thing; when someone wins “You’re a star,” don’t lumber them with some trite piece of crap of a song. Play to their strengths. Remember Bill Martin’s victory. No song should ever contain the lines:

“Born in London late October,
You mid-June in Herzegovina”

or (the whole chorus is magnificently awful)

“What is the colour of our skin?
When we all shine from once within,
Whether you're rich or poor,
I know for sure,
That we all hold the cure.
So let us all join our hearts as one,
This is our future just begun,
If we accept belief, avoid the grief and start it all again,
Well maybe we might find a better plan.”

That was Simon Casey’s cross to bear, but get a load of the monkey on poor Mickey Joe’s back

“Ask me why
The sun and moon go round
Ask me why
My feet never touch the ground
Tell the truth
You take my breath away”



No.No.No.No.NO.

Look at some of your triumphs man!

“Ride on”

“When you ride into the night without a trace behind
Run your claw along my gut, one last time
I turn to face an empty space, where once you used to lie
And look for a spark that lights the night
Through a teardrop in my eye”

or “Scorn not his simplicity”

“Only he knows how to face the future hopefully
Surrounded by despair
He won't ask for your pity or your sympathy
But surely you should care”

You used not accept lyical garbage, why now? Go to the Helix, Cool. Punish the fools. Don’t listen to the other two has-beens on the couch. Their opinion is worthless. They haven’t seen what you’ve seen! Why are you selling yourself short? Better still, don’t turn up for work. Send the producer a note:

“Couldn’t make it today, all the acts are aural torture. Decided to write good songs for good artists. I hate Ronan Keating. Louis Walsh is a worthless purveyor of pap.

Regards,
Cool.

P.S I have decided to call myself Cool from now on, as I cast off the last twenty years!”

Save yourself.

Apology

"Dear large pharmaceutical company,

In an ironic twist of fate it appears that I am getting a winter cold. Please send that guy handing out the free stuff back to Tara Street Station, even better can you put him at the Coolmine Station in time for the 8:30 train. I promise that I’ll give drugs to all my children for ever, helping you keep your fat shareholders in trinkets and baubles. I sorry if my earlier comments caused you distress, and I’ll even accept the free drugs from the ugly guy you send to the station instead of half naked lovelies.

Obviously, and I cannot stress enough, I am not a crank, and you are not pimps.

Yours etc.,"

I am not a crank, you pimps!


This morning, whilst being on time for work the second day running, I saw the oddest thing at Tara Street station. Tara Street Station for those of you that don’t take rail transport to the city centre, is the busiest train station in Dublin; full of prosaic overweight rail workers, dislocated junkies, and tired commuters. A bit like any rail station in any western city. If you are on time for work when you leave the depot, you are greeted by the regular buskers, either trad-guy with beard and tin whistle or trad-bird with beard and squeezebox, some pigeons, pretty corporate whores handing out leaflets, or pretty corporate whores handing out free stuff. The free stuff, besides being a good incentive for being on time for work, is normally food. This morning, the free stuff was a leading anti-cold drink.

So what? It’s cold, people are sick. They’re only marketing their product. A product that just happens to contain paracetamol. Is it not a tad irresponsible to stand outside the busiest train station in Ireland peddling a product that should not be taken unless you’re sick? It is not a prescription drug, granted, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the first time I’ve been spammed without receiving an email. I should send an letter to the pharmaceutical company in question.

“Dear Sir/Madam,

When leaving Tara Station today, some pimp tried to push your best selling cold remedy containing paracetamol on me. Doesn’t an overdose of this stuff give you liver and kidney failure? Are you allowed do this? Perhaps it was a competitor trying to get you into hot water (ha ha!). If you are going to give your product away on street corners, can you get pretty girls to do it like everybody else, instead of some dopey looking guy with a backpack. Does the FDA know about this??

Assholes!

I am not a crank,
Yours etc.,”

But I don’t care that much.

The first sign of trouble was the microwave’s political rhetoric. Scrolling across the LCD was a message affirming the value of the work it did. The toaster had sided with it, making sure only to produce slices imprinted with Marxism Leninism doctrine. Meanwhile across the counter the white goods had formed a fascist alliance with the cappuccino machine, intent on kitchen domination. They cleared out their corner of the kitchen of any undesirable elements, cups, cutlery etc. The cuckoo clock had brokered a deal with the fuse board and was hoarding the batteries, everybody left it alone. The kettle made the first move; it was walking under the cooker hood in under a day. No one could understand why the spice rack gave in so easily. The blender had complete domination of the sink. Everybody left the mighty fridge alone. The sandwich maker had dug itself in second drawer down, and was in stalemate with the iron, which had made drawer one its home. The washing machine stayed out of the war, it was all happening on the other side of the room anyway. Supplies to the sandwich maker were being lost across the sink. The mantle clock seeing this sent an electric carving knife to its death. From this, he broke the white goods code and sank the blender. The carving knife did not die in vain. The head of white goods, coffee grinder, thirsty for complete domination, launched an attack on the fridge. They would have made it if they hadn’t got caught in the icer. The sandwich maker, keen to press home the advantage, joined with the spice rack and the popcorn maker, who had just landed north of the cooker, to overthrow the iron. The war seemed in its final stages, until the rice ball, inexplicably, crossed the kitchen and launched an attack on the washing machine. The washing machine, incensed, flooded the utensil rack twice. They are still stained to this day.

Once the mop up was complete, all the appliances returned home, except for the white goods who found that their corner of the kitchen had been split in two. The cups and cutlery unable to return to their homeland were given a brand new space in the middle-right hand press. The spice rack claimed that it won the war single-handedly. The sandwich maker and the mantle clock went home tired and damaged. The cuckoo clock retains control of the fuses to this day. The washing machine went on to build far more effective ways of flooding the kitchen. The fridge was involved in this race for a while, but then realised that it was pointless and defrosted. The microwave and toaster continue to spout rhetoric and have got the pasta maker to print leaflets. Nobody’s listening. The washing machine, desperate to find a new enemy has picked a fight with the china. The china seems not to care.

The focus list:

Drink Vietnamese weasel coffee (Cà phê Chon)
Learn to dive
Build my own house
Write THAT book
Cook Meze
Have karate hair for a week
Read all the books on my bookshelf that I haven't read.
Fly a plane
Juggle 3 clubs fluidly
Go to the theatre once a month in 2004

Easy. Eeeeeeeeeeassssssssssssy.

50 things to do before I die. You can check them out at my50

Of that list, I resolve (is that a verb?) to do these this year

Jump from a plane.
Go Camping.
Swims with Dolphins.
Fire a gun.
Plant a tree.
Scuba dive off Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Learn to Cook.
Milk a cow barehand.
Eat caviar.
Drive a tractor.
Memorise a poem.
Send a message in a bottle.

Here's my current 100 things to do before I die List

Its got a 100 things, but is still a work in progress.