Jumping Ship...

My massive ego has finally exploded and so I've done gone got myself a real big fancy wordpress blog - at my own domain name:

www.leocullen.com/blog

Swivel on that! Life has taken me a few small turns away from the original premise of this blog - surfing, language and the pursuit of idleness. Seen as I'll be spending a lot of time in the Fatherland that knocks surfing regularly on the head; I never did write much about language anyway (so that shows up that pretentious bollocks for what it was); and the pursuit of idleness requires a lot of hardwork, time and dedication to achieve (or perhaps just spectacular good luck). So, that's the last post on this blog for a while. If - like half the country - you are now unemployed and have too much time on your hands, scoot on over to the new one for some inane blather about life in Dortmund and the occasional rant.

Merry Recession, everyone! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Wow! long time no posting. So what's happened since September? I went to the Fatherland, had a great time and come back to a country in the (even more) shit. No surprises there, then. Especially when you consider we have a Prime Minister who can barely speak English, a Health Minister who's morbidly obese, a Finance Minister who proclaims an ignorance of basic economics and a Deputy Prime Minister who didn't even know how many EU commisioners member states had. And that is how I know, without even having to listen to a single economist, that we are fucked.

OK, negativity and rant over. Had a great time at Cormac and Paul's last gig - they're playing the Whisky in Cork Thursday 18th Dec, so be there, if you can, for a rocking night. Their myspace page is http://www.myspace.com/blackriveraffair. Had a lovely weekend surfing down in Cork last weekend, first one of the winter, bloody freezing but magic, great soul food. I'm busy at the moment with a project, and then I'm back to the Fatherland for Weihnachten. OK, got to start building the Christmas cake I stupidly agreed to - Its a massive job - three days to construct a cake - the Petronas Towers went up faster.

Equinox

So the nights get longer from here on in; and if this economic crisis turns out to be the perfect shitstorm they may last a very long time.  

Debt of a Nation

With 250,000 homes lying empty in the country why has it come as such an apparent shock to many (including the government, it seems) that we no longer need to continue building 90,000 substandard "homes" and rabbit hutches, sorry, I mean "appartments" each year. Now, I'm no economics expert but surely this is a basic case of supply and demand?

There's a recession on the way, yeah? Great, people might remove their heads from their arses just long enough to see things as they really are:

EXTERNAL DEBT

rank ------country-----------------total --------------------------------------per head of population

-	World	54,310,000	2004 est.	8,141
1	United States	12,877,889	31-Dec-07	42,343
2	United Kingdom	11,502,800	Q4 2007	189,855
3	Germany	4,489,000	30-Jun-07	54,604
4	France	4,396,000	30-Jun-07	68,183
5	Italy	2,345,000	30-Jun-07	39,446
6	Netherlands	2,277,000	30-Jun-07	138,619
7	Spain	2,047,000	30 June 2007 est.	45,287
8	Ireland	1,841,000	30-Jun-07	424,291
9	Japan	1,492,000	30-Jun-07	11,682
10	Switzerland	1,340,000	30-Jun-07	176,019

Ireland owes more money than Japan who have a population of 125 million, compared to Ireland's 4.2 million. Party on.

Monkey Business

Today marks the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin and the now sadly forgotten Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Evolution:

"The joint publication of Wallace's and Darwin's papers proposing the revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection had astonishingly little effect. The president of the Linnean Society, in his annual report for 1858, stated, "The year ... has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear."

Understatement or what?

hey, teacher... Leave those kids alone!

Who could have guessed teaching English could be so tiring? Well, obviously anyone who has ever taught. So I'm back in the world of the worker. Far out or what? Ok, too wrecked to try to be as funny or sarcastic or as deep and insightful as I usually am (Irony never tires). I used up all the good stuff in class. Tomorrows lesson: OK class, watch DVD "The Golden Compass" while teacher rests his eyes...ZZZZZ

Apathy... who cares?

I was all fired up to exercise my democratic right to vote... I was going to vote Yes just because creepy Sinn Fein and the sinister Libertas (their founder's company has links to the US military, 'nuff said) were advocating a No vote. Basically, I find it a good idea to be in opposition to to those who would justify murder for political ends... But our present government also has blood on their hands - Shannon. So, what to do? Lies, propaganda, bullshit, it never ends. I am naive. And what's wrong with that? To expect people to behave with a bit of decency to each other, their planet and future generations? Yeah, crazy thinking, I know. Did you notice Peak Oil being mentioned in mainstream media recently? Those who raised it a couple of years back were dismissed as cranks, hippies, socialists or worse. Like global warming, it is now accepted fact. Now the greatest evil which could befall Western Civilization looms: Recession! Aaaaagggghhh!!! run screaming, everyone, in blind panic and terror! Aaaaaaggghhhhhh! Like a slowdown in our relentless consumption of resources and the subsequent filth we spew as a result is the worst thing that could happen. Jesus, we might have to pause from our never-ending trips to the shops to buy more crap we don't need/ can't afford anyway, to consider just what the fuck we are actually doing to ourselves: We are like an obscenely obese swine gorging ourselves to the point we vomit and shit all over ourselves, then gorging more, covered in our own vile filth, excrement and puke, and also covering our starving neighbour in it, our starving neighbour whose back-breaking labour has made our depraved lifestyle possible. Fuck you, Sinn Fein and your poisonous ideology, Fuck you, Libertas, you self-serving snakes, and Fuck you, Fianna Fail for a million and one reasons.

So, no, I wont be voting.