Fiona McCann
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Child abuse
This morning I was reading the news when I found two separate stories which just enraged me. I am never surprised by anything that anyone does because I have no faith in humanity as a whole whatsoever, and I am aware that there are thousands of individuals in the world who have absolutely no morals or ethics of any kind. On the other hand, however, you like to hang on to the belief that certain people who are given positions of responsibility might exercise this commodity to the betterment of life--people like judges, for instance, or religious superiors, especially if they happen to be women. Of course, that is wishful thinking. In the Irish Independent I learned that a 45 year old man has brought a suit against the state and various other entities because when he was 12 and in state care after the death of his mother, a care worker 'severely and repeatedly sexually and physically abused and tortured' him. When he told the school's head nun, she did nothing but told him to 'go back and watch himself.' In the second story, an 80 year old former Primitive Methodist Church cleric, John Wray, was found guilty of grooming a 12 year old boy for sex and of buggering and indecently assaulting him for years. The shite-for-brains judge in the case, however, Carroll Moran at Limerick Circuit Court, saw fit to let this 80 year old bastard walk free from court because of his guilty plea and his ill health. In my book, there is not much worse than sexually abusing children, and people who are found guilty of it or of conspiring to cover it up or ignore it don't deserve any kind of mercy or understanding at all. I don't care if your wife just left you or your uncle did it to you when you were growing up or if you are insane or whatever the hell your problem is. You DON'T have sex with children. This goes for men and women both, of course. I can't think of a punishment strong enough for child molesters. In my opinion, they don't deserve to live. Even hardened criminals of other sorts hate child abusers and will kill or hurt them if given a chance. Maybe that's the ticket. |
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2.2.05 20:00 |
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Israelis murder another child
Aljazeera.Net Killing of Palestinian girl shatters family By Laila El-Haddad in Gaza Friday 04 February 2005 16:05 Makka Time, 13:05 GMT  When Nuran died, a part of me died also, her mother said Ten-year-old Nuran Iyad Dib went to school as ecstatic as any schoolgirl should be. But this crisp winter day was special: she would receive her bi-annual report card. As it turned out, she passed with flying colours, which meant a gift from her parents, who had been saving up their dwindling funds for this occasion. The teacher's comment on top of her report read: We predict a very bright future for Nuran. But Nuran would have no such future, and her gift lies abandoned in a corner of her family's grieving home. On the afternoon of 31 January 2005, Israeli sniper fire ripped through her face as she stood in her school's courtyard, lining up for afternoon assembly. The last thing Nuran's mother remembers of her daughter before she left for school that morning was hearing her say her morning prayers, during which she recited a verse about God having created death - and life - as a test for mankind. In retrospect, Nuran's mother believes it was a premonition of what was to come. "Then she left for school. She was a completely selfless child. She was thinking of her sisters till the last second. She came back after she had left the house, and said: 'Mommy, it's cold - please put some sweaters on my sisters before they leave'," her mother said. "What more can I say except that she was a breath of fresh air in these hard times? Her name was Nur [light] and that's exactly what she was." Her death has many here questioning Israel's commitment to a ceasefire amid a one-sided truce and virtual period of calm. "We extended an olive branch to them and instead of reciprocating they cut our hand off," Nuran's mother cried, sitting in an unpainted cement-block bedroom with nothing but thin foam mattresses on the ground. "What did she ever do to deserve such a fate? Or her sister, who saw Nura die in front of her? Every night she wails out in her sleep: 'Bring me my sister, bring me my sister'". Fifth child killed But Nuran was not the first innocent Palestinian child to meet such a violent death in occupied Gaza. In fact, she was the fifth to be shot dead or maimed by Israeli occupation forces while on the premises of their UN-flagged schools in the past two years.  Nuran was standing in assembly when a bullet struck her face Two girls were killed in separate incidents in Rafah and Khan Yunus last year while sitting at their desks, and a little girl was permanently blinded in March 2003. According to UNRWA's spokesperson, Paul McCann, the UN relief organisation has repeatedly protested against the Israeli military’s indiscriminate firing into civilian areas in the occupied Palestinian territory. Nuran's school, which is about 600m away from the border, has been hit on numerous occasions since the start of the conflict, he said. This is the first time the shots have had tragic consequences. "We want to ask the world: Was Nuran holding an explosive belt around her waist? Was she toting a Kalashnikov? She knew no politics, only love," her aunt Iktimal Husayn asked rhetorically. "She was supposed to bring home her report from school, but instead she brought home her death certificate." Nuran's mother says minutes before receiving news of her daughter's death she sensed something was not right. "I asked her father about a beautiful picture of Nuran we had taken a few years back. I wanted to see it. And then her baby sister dropped a large jar of chilli sauce on the floor." Israeli denials Witnesses say the children were clapping their hands and singing the national anthem when the firing started. One bullet pierced the hand of Aysha Isam al-Khatib, while the other hit Nuran in the head. She fell to the ground at once. Bystanders say they assumed she was unconscious until they noticed the pool of blood beneath her shattered skull. A third bullet hit a young girl's book bag, and was stopped in its tracks by one of her folders, only a few excruciating centimetres away from her spine. Eleven-year-old Salwa al-Khalifa was next to Nuran when the bullets struck. She described with disturbing composure well beyond her years the details of that bloody hour. "A bullet went in through her nose and came out of her neck. We all ducked. Several other bullets hit the window and school wall over there." A day after the incident, Israeli authorities said their initial investigation indicated it was fire from jubilant Palestinian police celebrating the return of Hajj pilgrims, not Israeli sniper fire, that killed Nuran. Pockmarked walls But the pockmarked wall of the UNRWA school, which stands 600m away from an Israeli sniper tower and far away from residential blocks, tells a different story.  School counsellors provided therapy to Nuran's classmates "There is nothing around us here, and there were no pilgrims that we know of celebrating that day. There is just an outpost a few hundred metres away - one from which sniper fire has frequently hit our school," school principal Siham al-Ghoff said. Al-Ghoff says if the fire was indeed Palestinian, the bullet would not have hit Nuran in the face but rather landed on top of her head, as rifles fired in celebration usually point upwards. Both Palestinian security sources and UN officials confirm the account, saying that the way the bullets were scattered, along with witness testimonies, point to Israeli gunfire. "Everything is pointing to the fact that it was the Israelis. There were a number of shots, and the way they were scattered gives us an indication of the direction where they came from, and that corresponds with witness reports that the firing came from an [Israeli] APC or tank in the area," one official said. School goes on Meanwhile, in Nuran's school, life goes on. Girls who received top marks this term were rewarded with tins of toffee that they passed out enthusiastically to all visitors, a step taken by school counsellors to attempt to normalise an abnormal situation. But in Nuran's fourth-grade classroom, the mood was far from celebratory. "The children are too afraid to go out for their recess, and many simply go to the bathroom and weep all day," principal al-Ghoff said. Counsellors have been trying to help the children work through the trauma of recent days. When asked to portray their conception of their classmate's death, most drew tanks and Apache helicopters invading their school. "I thought there's a truce now, something like this would never happen. Now we're trying to pick up the pieces," al-Ghoff added. Shattered lives The Palestinian Authority has filed a formal complaint with the Israeli side about the girls' shooting, but it is unlikely Nuran's family will ever get answers about their daughter's death.  Nuran had asked for sweaters for her sisters before she was killed Back in her family's home, Nuran's mother sat gazing in disbelief at her daughter's report card, while her father Iyad stood weeping silently. Nearby, an Israeli tank shell rattled the windows of the room, which together with young Nuran's death served as a reminder that if there is any calm it has not yet reached Rafah. "When Nuran died, a part of me died also," her mother said. "She was a bright light that was extinguished. For me, there can be no more peace." Aljazeera |
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6.2.05 06:41 |
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A kick in the Bud
Times Online **O yay! Nervous drunks! Caffeine beer to liven up drinkers Ben Farmer February 06, 2005 A NEW beer laced with as much caffeine as half a cup of coffee could prove to be the perfect pint for drinkers struggling to stay awake in the pub after 24-hour licensing laws come into effect. BE, produced by the Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch, has gone on sale in America and if successful is expected to be exported to Britain. The drink, pronounced “B to the E”, where B stands for Budweiser and E stands for extra, is 4.5% alcohol and has 54mg of caffeine. Containing fruit flavouring, ginseng and guarana, a tropical berry, it is aimed at young drinkers already used to mixing spirits with energy drinks such as Red Bull. Nathaniel Davis, the brewmaster who designed the drink, said it had an aroma of blackberry, cherry, typical hop and malt flavours, rounded off with a slightly sweet and tart finish he describes as the “wow factor”. American nutritionists have warned, however, that as both alcohol and caffeine are diuretics, drinkers could end up more dehydrated than usual and with worse hangovers. Smaller breweries have in the past produced beer caffeine mixes, but Anheuser-Busch is the first to bring the idea to a large market. In 2003 the brewer made more than half of all the beer drunk in America. Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition at King’s College London, was reported to have said drinkers were unlikely to drink enough to become addicted to the alcohol and the caffeine. He said: “What concerns me more is that it will encourage drinkers to believe that the effects of alcohol will be lessened by caffeine. That is very dangerous.” Dawn Roepke, the brewer’s manager for new products, said she did not believe there would be problems with the new drink. She said that if drinkers “stay out late having fun with their friends, and do it responsibly, we will be happy”. Beer purists are unconvinced by the new innovation. Greg Kitsock, editor of American Brewer, said: “It’s an interesting concept, but when I want to drink beer I don’t want to ingest caffeine at the same time. “When I need a shot of coffee, I don’t want a beer.” |
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6.2.05 10:28 |
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CYA
 A humourous sidelight (is there such a word?) Earlier I could not get to this blog as there was some problem with 20six. I was reading the emails I get from the site, however, and you can always tell how many practice drafts someone has made when a post or comment is created because I get an email for each one. Even if THE PERSON deletes the comment, you can see that there WAS a comment, so it's kinda funny. I suppose it's akin to yarning on messenger with several guys at once and trying to juggle what they have said with what you are typing to each of them and suddenly you realize with a rising sense of horror that you have typed a certain comment into the wrong convo box and sent it merrily on its way to someone who probably thinks you are only just chatting sweet nothings to him! hahahaha! Anyway, I hope whoever out there got *my* comment and sweetie, I might add, is enjoying them. *sigh* 
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6.2.05 18:28 |
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The Facts of Life
Irish Emigrant Cormac MacConnell - February 5, 2005  When I was about twelve or thirteen Sandy called me into the kitchen one morning and very vividly and colourfully explained to me the Facts of Life. Sandy was very good at it. There was only one problem. I did not have a clue that morning what under Heaven my father was talking about. I must have been a late developer or something like that. >>>Read on ------------ |
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7.2.05 07:07 |
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humans to be cloned for research
Guardian **further reading links on site Dolly scientist to clone human embryos Staff and agencies Tuesday February 8, 2005  The creator of Dolly the sheep has been granted a licence to clone human embryos for medical research, it was announced today. Professor Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh and a team from King's College, London, plan to clone embryos to study motor neurone disease (MND). Consent was granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). Professor Wilmut made history when Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, was born on July 5, 1996. His application was a joint one with Christopher Shaw, of the department of neurology, Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College, London. Sufferers of motor neurone disease and Brian Dickie, director of research development at the Motor Neurone Disease Association, attended an event in Edinburgh to publicise the announcement. In August last year, the HFEA gave scientists from the University of Newcastle the green light to clone human embryos. The research - which aims to treat a host of incurable diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes - has provoked fury from pro-life groups. Earlier last year scientists in South Korea said they had produced the first definitive human cloned embryos. Professor Wilmut plans to apply the technique used to clone Dolly - cell nuclear replacement - to human embryos. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "It will be possible for the first time to be able to study cells from the very early stages of development that would have developed motor neurone disease had they been in a patient. "This will create totally new opportunities to begin to understand the disease and to begin to test new drugs and to research the disease in totally new ways that can't be done in any other way," he added. The pioneering scientist proposes to harvest human embryonic stem cells from surplus embryos or embryos created specifically for the purpose by IVF. Dolly died in February 2003 after developing a progressive lung disease usually found in older sheep. Cloning to create copies of human babies is outlawed in Britain but therapeutic cloning has been legal since 2002. Professor Shaw says the licence is potentially a big step forward for motor neurone disease research but they still had to raise the money to carry out the research. "We have spent 20 years looking for genes that cause MND and to-date we have come up with just one gene. We believe that the use of cell nuclear replacement will greatly advance our understanding of why motor neurones degenerate in this disease, without having to first hunt down the gene defect," he said. Stem cells are the master cells of the body. They appear when embryos are just a few days old and go on to develop into every type of cell and tissue in the body. Scientists hope to be able to extract the stem cells from embryos when they are in their blank state and direct them to form any desired cell type to treat a variety of diseases, ranging from Parkinson's to diabetes. Getting the cells from an embryo that is cloned from a sick patient could allow scientists to track how diseases develop and provide genetically matched cell transplants that do not cause the immune systems to reject the transplant. The work, called therapeutic cloning because it does not result in a baby, is opposed by abortion foes and other biological conservatives because researchers must destroy human embryos to harvest the cells. "What a sad and extraordinary volte face for the pioneer of animal cloning," say the anti-cloning group Comment on Reproductive Ethics. "Wilmut has always been the loudest voice in recent years warning of the dangers of mammalian cloning. And we remember how in the years following the birth of Dolly the Sheep, he assured the world he would never go near human cloning." Professor Wilmut has repeatedly condemned the idea of human cloning to create babies, but not therapeutic cloning. "We recognise that motor neuron disease is a serious congenital condition," said Angela McNab, the chief of the embryo research agency. "Following careful review of the medical, scientific, legal and ethical aspects of this application, we felt it was appropriate to grant the Roslin Institute a one-year licence for this research into the disease." Professors Wilmut and Shaw plan to clone cells from patients with the disease, derive blank-slate stem cells from the cloned embryo, make them develop into nerve cells and compare their development with nerve cells derived from healthy embryos. Jimmy Johnstone, the former Celtic player who has motor neurone disease, said: "I am delighted with this news - today's decision will help hundreds of thousands of people around the world and the people who care for them. It's about saving lives. Now I just hope that they can fast-track the research because time is the enemy for this illness. "To those who oppose this research, I would just say this: If one of your loved ones had this terrible disease and you knew that using stem cells could lead to a cure - what would you do?" Dr Dickie said: "Today's announcement means we are a step closer to medical research that has the potential to revolutionise the future treatment of MND. "All along, the association has recognised that the area of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning raises moral, ethical and religious issues, and it's important that these are considered and debated. "However, in principle, we endorse this research project, on the basis that it is legal, has a sound scientific rationale, and has the potential to bring us closer to treatments and ultimately a cure for MND." Motor neuron disease is an umbrella term for a collection of illnesses of varying severity that all lead to loss of muscle function because of nerve failure. About 10% of those affected live for a decade or more, like celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking, who has a type of motor neuron disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. However, most die within five years of the onset of symptoms, which usually start in middle age. An inherited defect in a single gene is responsible for about 2% of cases of the disease. Another 8% of cases are caused by some other, yet unidentified, inherited genetic abnormality. "This is potentially a big step forward for [motor neuron disease] research," said Professor Shaw. "We have spent 20 years looking for genes that cause [motor neuron disease] and to date we have come up with just one gene. We believe that the use of cell nuclear replacement will greatly advance our understanding of why motor neurons degenerate in this disease, without having to hunt down the gene defect." Genetics expert Peter Braude of King's College, London, who is not involved with the work, said that studying how nerves go wrong in motor neuron disease and how it can be cured is particularly difficult and that cloning is the only way to produce the cells necessary to answer such questions. Professor Richard Gardner, the chairman of the Royal Society working group on stem cell research and cloning, said: "The granting of a second licence in the UK to carry out valuable research into therapeutic cloning highlights the potential benefits that are being pursued through this new technology. "However, we do need to ensure that mavericks do not attempt to use this to undertake reckless experiments in the reproductive cloning of humans. "Next week, the United Nations is meeting to discuss the form of a political declaration on human cloning. As national science academies all over the world have stressed, we want to see the message made clear. "Individual countries should be allowed to make up their own minds about therapeutic cloning but extending these techniques to attempt to produce a cloned baby is scientifically unsafe, ethically unsound and socially unacceptable." |
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8.2.05 19:12 |
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Hermann Goering
Times Online 'I helped Goering escape hangman' By James Bone February 08, 2005 US guard claims he smuggled in the poison that Hitler’s henchman used to kill himself A FORMER American guard at the Nuremberg Tribunal claimed yesterday that he had smuggled in the poison that allowed Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second-in-command, to escape the hangman’s noose. Herbert Lee Stivers, 78, a retired sheet-metal worker from Hesperia, California, broke almost six decades of silence to appear to solve one of the great mysteries of the Second World War. “I gave it to him,” Mr Stivers, a former US Army private, told the Los Angeles Times. He said he smuggled the cyanide capsule to Goering after befriending a beautiful, dark-haired German woman outside the court. Goering committed suicide in his cell in a military prison on October 15, 1946, just hours before he was to be executed for war crimes. The commission that investigated his death found that he had taken his own life by swallowing potassium cyanide. Rival theories have swirled for decades about how the Reichsmarshal got hold of the vial that killed him. It has been suggested that the poison was concealed under a gold dental crown or in a hollowed-out tooth, hidden under sagging skin in his navel or inserted into his rectum. Speculation focused on the possible role played by a US Army officer who took a watch from Goering, on the German doctor who regularly examined him and on a Nazi SS officer who might have passed the poison to him in a bar of GI soap. In the popular imagination it was thought that Goering’s wife, Emmy, might have slipped him the vial in a “kiss of death” in her final prison visit. The inquiry concluded that Goering had the cyanide all the time he was in military custody. Although impossible to verify, Mr Stivers’s confession upsets all of the theories and suggests that a war criminal cheated justice because a 19-year-old private was trying to impress a woman. Mr Stivers was one of the white-helmeted soldiers who guarded the 22 Nazis on trial at Nuremberg. The guards were free to talk to the prisoners and even collect their autographs. “Goering was a very pleasant guy,” Mr Stivers said. “He spoke pretty good English. We’d talk about sports, ball games. He was a flier, and we talked about Lindbergh.” One day a young, dark-haired beauty who called herself Mona approached Mr Stivers outside a hotel housing an officers’ club. “She asked me what I did, and I told her I was a guard,” Mr Stivers said. She said, ‘Do you get to see all the prisoners?’ ‘Every day,’ I said. The next day I guarded Goering and got his autograph and handed that to her. She told me that she had a friend she wanted me to meet. The following day we went to his house.” There, Mr Stivers was introduced to two men — “Erich” and “Mathias” — who told him that Goering was “a very sick man” who was not getting the medicine he needed in prison. Twice he took notes to Goering that Erich had hidden in a fountain pen. The third time, Erich put a capsule into the pen. “He said it was medication, and that if it worked and Goering felt better, they’d send him some more,” Mr Stivers said. After delivering the “medicine” to the Nazi leader, he returned the pen to the woman. “I never saw Mona again,” he said. “I guess she used me. I wasn’t thinking of suicide when I took it to Goering. He didn’t seem suicidal. I would have never knowingly taken something in that I thought was going to be used to help someone cheat the gallows.” When Goering killed himself two weeks later, Mr Stivers decided to keep silent for fear of facing prosecution. He went public only at the urging of his daughter, Linda Dadey, who told him he owed it to history. RISE AND FALL OF A WAR CRIMINAL # The founder of the Gestapo, Goering was born in Rosenheim, Bavaria, in 1893 # The most senior figure in the Nazi hierarchy to authorise the “Final Solution” in writing # Hitler named him as his successor in a 1941 decree, but retracted this in his will # Captured by American troops in Austria after Hitler’s suicide # Convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg # Found dead hours before he was due to be executed WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY “It’s probably the most plausible explanation to date. To say any more would be going too far” Paul Weindling, author of Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials “It doesn’t sound like something made up. It sounds even more believable than the story about the poison in the dental crown” Cornelius Schnauber, University of Southern California “[His story] is crazy enough to be true. But there’s no way it can be proven. Nobody really knows except the person who did it.” Aaron Breitbart, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Los Angeles |
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9.2.05 00:12 |
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Michael Jackson
Times Online Neverland, or Iraq? That's an easy one. Hand me that flak jacket, will you . . . LA Notebook by Chris Ayres February 08, 2005  I ONCE took a girl on a date to Neverland. My only excuse is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, in spite of the $5,000 bribe, the sickly three-hour car journey up dark mountain roads, the legal tussle, and the incident with Mike Tyson in the lavatory. Needless to say, I never saw the girl, or Neverland, again. I did, however, see Michael Jackson another time — but there was a large crowd outside the courthouse and he was busy, so we didn’t talk. I just nodded and waved. I think he saw me. The date was Michael’s 45th birthday party — to which he had invited 500 “friends”. According to someone I met in a Hollywood bar, 250 of those tickets were being given to Michael’s favourite charity, which would distribute them to its biggest donors. Being a pushy, journalist-type, I made some phone calls. By the end of the day, I had discovered that $5,000, contributed via an eBay account, would do the trick. Now, don’t get me wrong: $5,000 is a lot of money. But I liked this girl a lot. So, naturally, I called up my boss and asked him to pay for it. “Imagine the story: a day in Neverland!” I said. My boss made a strange noise, which I took as a yes. Then I bought the ticket. The dubiousness of the transaction was confirmed when I had to drive to a gated mountain retreat, somewhere above Malibu, to collect my gold-coloured Willy Wonka-style pass from a man in dark glasses who wouldn’t tell me his name. By the time I pulled up outside my date’s apartment, I realised that this adventure could all go horribly wrong. I imagined eating dinner in Santa Maria police station, with only a black eye and a lawsuit to keep me company. There is, of course, a good reason why Michael Jackson chooses to live in Neverland: not only is it a long way from Los Angeles, it is also a long way from Santa Barbara, which, in its own right, is a long way from Los Angeles. By the time we got there on my Jeep’s wobbly suspension, my date and I were tired — mainly of each other’s company. As we passed through Neverland’s unmarked gates, I reassured myself that at least this would be an amusing story for The Times. That was when a 200lb security guard tapped on my window and handed me a pen and a 20-page confidentiality agreement. And so it was that I entered Michael Jackson’s paradise with the knowledge that both my date and career in journalism were over. What can I tell you about Neverland? There’s the obvious stuff: the statues of semi-naked children everywhere; the Disney music piped through speakers disguised as rocks; the badly maintained fairground rides; the bored-looking Anaconda in the zoo; the spooky miniature choo-choo train; not to mention, of course, the waxwork figures, holding baskets of sweets and ice cream. Like any sane, well-adjusted and responsible grown-up . . . I loved it. Especially the flamingos in the pond outside Michael’s bedroom. My date, however, did not. She kept saying “ew” and threatening to leave. In other words, she acted like every other girl I’ve ever taken anywhere, apart from the one foolish enough to marry me. I realised the problem with Neverland as I bolted from the lavatory after accidentally slamming the door shut in Mike Tyson’s face. There’s nothing real there. Even the party felt fake. Michael was absent for the entire day, coming out only to eat his birthday cake on a raised platform, 15ft above his guests. By then, coachloads of screaming fans had arrived from whichever planet Michael Jackson’s fans live on. Apart from Tyson, I wondered if the King of Pop had a single real friend on the property. On the way out — my date now quiet and distant — I met the man who used to look after Bubbles, Michael’s chimpanzee. Bubbles, I learnt, had become violent and had to leave. But perhaps, I thought, the poor old chimp was just unhappy. Perhaps Bubbles, like me, had failed to find love in Neverland. # SPARE A thought for those of us “embedded” with the Michael Jackson trial up in Santa Maria. Having been a real embed in Iraq, I can say that the Jackson trial is much worse. After the second day of standing outside the Santa Maria courthouse with 1,200 other journalists, I began to long for the sound of gunfire. |
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9.2.05 00:27 |
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Steps to Blogdom
kuro5hin.org How To Start Your Very Own Blog In Fifty-One Easy Steps! By internetslacker Wed Feb 9th, 2005 at 06:40:10 AM EST  Interested in the blogging scene? Confused how to go about setting up your very own blog? Follow these fifty-one easy steps and you'll be a l33t blogger in no time! 1. Find a free blogging service, such as www.blogger.com 2. Register a catchy yet philosophically deep name for your new blog: "lifesucks"; "All Things Me"; "Lifehacker"; "Playing With Matches"; "The Internet Slacker", "I Stalk David Hasselhoff". 3. Consider one of the many pre-made website templates offered by the blogging service, or one created by you. 4. Turn your nose up in disgust at the thought of using a pre-made template for your blog. 5. Spend the next seventeen hours creating a functioning website from scratch. If using Microsoft FrontPageTM, relocate all children and elders to a safe area out of your "profanity zone". 6. Complete your self-made blog template by clicking on the "Publish Website" command in Microsoft FrontPageTM. 7. Watch in shock as the aforementioned seventeen hours of hard work gets permanently deleted off your hard drive by Microsoft FrontPageTM. 8. Swear so loudly all dogs within a five block radius begin running in circles and howling. 9. Declare "Screw It" and choose from a pre-made template. Always choose one with lots of kittens and flashing animated gifs. 10. Make sure the template is ready for your first blog entry. You can do this by going to your new blog's URL address and seeing if the page loads properly. It will have no posts yet, of course, as you have not actually written your first blog entry. (If you do see a post written by yourself at this specific moment in time, read it! You've traveled back in time to warn yourself about the "Publish Website" command in Microsoft FrontPageTM). 11. Click on the "Create Post" selection. The window will reload with a box for you to type text in. 12. Put fingers to keyboard in preparation to type your first blog entry. 13. Realize in horror that you have absolutely no idea what you're going to write about. 14. And you've got a whole blog ahead of you. 15. Stand up and get an alcoholic beverage to calm you. 16. Pace back and forth while racking your brain for a great post. 17. Cast resentful looks at your computer monitor while drinking the alcoholic beverage. 18. Come up with a touching yet funny childhood memory you can write about, like when you and all the other fat kids in the neighborhood used to take down the ice cream man not unlike a pack of lions ravaging a wounded gazelle. 19. Or, make your first post about how much you love pets. Remark on the fact that you let your pet pit bull out of the house every night to get some freedom and exercise even though the sirens from the ambulances tearing through your neighborhood constantly interrupt your sleep. 20. Or, make a heartfelt confession about how guilty you feel that you could never be a vegetarian because you salivate every time a nature documentary appears on the television. 21. Sit back down at your computer desk with your great idea. 22. Complete your first post. 23. Experience a fleeting sense of satisfaction that you now have a blog with an actual entry, even though it details your sexual attraction to Yoda. 24. Immediately phone all your friends and family to tell them the URL. Remind your grandmother that 'stiffwoodysdiary' in your blog's address is spelled "all one word". 25. Reload your blog incessantly every two minutes to see if anyone has made a comment. 26. Become enraged when the very first comment made on your very first blog entry is "yuo are teh sUxx0r!" from Anonymous 27. Go outdoors to calm down and get some fresh air, since you've spent twenty-two hours now working on your blog. 28. Tell every person you encounter - jogger, police officer, frantic paramedic - your blog's URL. 29. Head back home when an idea for a blog entry comes to mind, such as the rudeness of paramedics who can't be bothered to talk about your blog because they are busy helping some whiner with pitbull bite wounds on his throat. 30. When back at your computer, immediately refresh your blog's page to see if any more comments were made while you were gone. 31. Grip the edge of your computer desk when the second comment reads "I said yuo are teh sUxx0r!" by Anonymous 32. Click on the "make new post" button on your blog. 33. Realize with horror you've totally forgotten the good writing idea. 34. Stand up and get another drink. 35. Sit back down at your computer desk. 36. Write your second post: how people who make dumb comments on blogs should be strung up by their genitals with barbed wire. 37. Complete the second post. 38. Stand up and get a third drink to calm you down from the blogging experience. 39. Watch TV while thinking you shouldn't watch so much television since experiencing life would probably make for a blog that's actually interesting to read. By going out more, you'll be able to continue to spread the address of your blog to bemused strangers, too. 40. Accept phone call from your grandmother asking you to change 'stiffwoody' in your blog's name to something more polite. 41. Refuse and hang up phone. 42. On the way back to the television, refresh your blog's page again to see if there are any more comments. 43. Experience relief when third comment is a non-abusive one. Become incredibly depressed when you discover it is written by a fellow blogger asking if you ever fantasize about wearing lederhosen while flailing midgets with kielbasa sausage, and if you'd like to meet up with him for same. 44. Stand up and get a much larger, stronger drink. 45. Consider making your third post. Repeat verbal declaration made in step #9, forget blogging for now, go to bed. 46. Just before you fall asleep, realize with horror you'll need to repeat steps #11 to #45 daily to keep your bragging rights about owning a blog (which, ironically, nobody reads). 47. Slip into an uneasy nightmare about being forced to type the word "sUxx0r" on a flaming keyboard while chained to Jabba the Hutt, who keeps demanding "More! More! Jakatooie Blogga Dooie! More!!!" 48. Wake up in the morning. Scream. 49. Read the new comments posted on your blog. Scream again. 50. Repeat for the rest of your life. 51. Welcome To Blogging! |
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10.2.05 22:38 |
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Dresden Remembered
Belfast Telegraph For survivors, Dresden is still an 'open wound' 60 years on By Tony Paterson 12 February 2005  Rudolf Eichner produces a blackened chess piece from the pocket of a tattered shoulder-bag. His attempt to give an "objective" account of what happened to him in Dresden on the night of 13 February 1945 fails before it has even started. Big shiny tears well up in his pale blue eyes. Years after that terrible night, which he spent huddling for shelter from the savage air raid and the firestorm that razed 75 per cent of Dresden and killed 35,000 people, Mr Eichner, now 80, found the chess piece - a knight. It was on the small patch of ground where he had endured the onslaught. "It is the only thing I managed to salvage from the bombing and every time I look at it I am overcome by emotions I can't control," he confessed this week. In February 1945, Mr Eichner had recently returned from the Russian front. The 20-year-old machine gunner was billeted at a military hospital in a converted school in Dippoldiswalde Street, about a mile from the city centre, and was recovering from his wounds. "My father and I were chess players," he recalled. "My father brought his chess set to the hospital to help me while away the time. When the bombing started, I just thought I must hang on to the chess set." In the end, only the board was any use - for beating out the flames on his and his companions' heads and, when all their hair had burned, to put out the flames on their clothes and skin. By Dresden standards, Mr Eichner was better equipped than most to cope with the raid. His hospital had a team of trained fire fighters and he and his wounded comrades survived the first wave of bombing almost unscathed. Together, they extinguished scores of RAF incendiary bombs that had burned their way through the roof of the building. "We were ready to go on fighting the fires until it was all over," Mr Eichner recalled. But then, at around 1am on the morning of 14 February, came the second RAF raid. "There were no warning sirens," he said. "We were completely surprised and rushed back down into the cellars of the hospital. But these quickly became hopelessly overcrowded with people who could no longer find shelter in their own burning buildings. The crush was unbearable, we were so tight you couldn't even fall over." The hospital received several direct hits. The lights went out and bricks from the safety wall over the windows were blown into the basement. "The air was thick with dust and smoke that was choking us. I remember seeing one woman throw herself across her baby's cot in an attempt to protect her child," Mr Eichner recalled. Then someone shouted that the ground floor of the hospital was on fire. "We had to get out but we had no idea where to go," Mr Eichner said. "Apart from the fire risk, it was becoming impossible to breathe in the cellar because the air was being pulled out by the increasing strength of the blaze." He and five other soldiers emerged from the hospital basement into the growing firestorm that was sucking air at hurricane force towards what by now was the inferno of the old town. "We could not stand up, we were on all fours, crawling," Mr Eichner said. "The wind was full of sparks and carrying bits of blazing furniture, debris and burning bits of bodies." The six men found a spot in a front garden behind a pile of rubble and made a circle. "Our faces were covered in wet rags and we spent the next six hours beating out the fires that kept flaring up in our hair and on our clothes that were tinder dry. We just kept praying," he recalled. By now the asphalt surface on many of the streets had melted and was tearing the shoes off Dresdeners who were fleeing the cellars of their burning homes. Many of the victims who suffered badly burned feet could not go on. They slumped to the ground and choked to death on the fumes. Hundreds of others sought safety in large concrete reservoirs that had been built in the town centre a year earlier to help fire-fighters. However, these proved a treacherous refuge because the smooth-sided tanks were more than 10 feet deep and had no ladders. By daylight, many inside had drowned. But, as the light of dawn became dimly visible through the smoke, Mr Eichner and his five companions knew they had survived the worst. They could hardly see - their eyes were swollen red from the smoke, and their skins were like parchment but covered in weeping blisters. They had all lost their hair, eyelashes and eyebrows. Mr Eichner made his way towards the main railway station which had been packed with refugees at the time of the raid. He saw terrible scenes. "There were charred bodies everywhere," he said. The corpses were blackened around the torsos but the legs were "pink like pork". There at the station, Mr Eichner found his father. He had collapsed with exhaustion after spending hours shifting corpses. The two fell into each other's arms and made their way across the devastated city. They narrowly missed being crushed by the falling façade of a burned-out building. In the days that followed, Mr Eichner remembers crossing the Altmarkt, the old town square, when SS guards - sent from a Nazi death camp - were supervising the burning of 6,865 bodies piled in a heap. The operation took two weeks to complete. Today, Mr Eichner will unveil a plaque on the Altmarkt in memory of the dead. "The experience of the bombing was far worse than being on the Russian front, where I was a front-line machine-gunner before I was wounded," Mr Eichner said. "At the front, you were scared most of the time, but at least you had some freedom of action. During the firestorm, the worst thing was that you felt completely powerless. You could do nothing but wait and pray." Despite the horror of his experiences that night, he doesn't blame the British: "No, like me, they were just fighting a war and trying to end it as quickly as possible." As we walked through Dresden this week, Mr Eichner pointed to the city's granite paving stones - among the only original features to survive the firestorm and subsequent reconstruction. Nearly every stone is deeply scored by shrapnel splinters from the raid. In photographs he took of Dresden in the early 1950s, the city centre is like a great moonscape - just three buildings marginally intact in an ocean of rubble. "Around here the houses were built so closely together that you could shake hands across the street from your bedroom window," he recalled as we crossed an area that is now a soulless, concrete arcade. Despite the rebuilt Frauen-kirche - the main structure was completed last June - and the painstakingly restored Baroque buildings of the old town, once immortalised by Canaletto, Dresden is still a city with too many green empty spaces to feel at ease. "For me, most of Dresden is an open wound," Mr Eichner remarked. It was hard to disagree. |
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13.2.05 03:04 |
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St Valentine in Éire
Irish Heritage E-mail Group **Lá Naomh Vailintín Shona Dhuit! - that's Irish for Happy Valentine's Day Saint Valentine And The Irish Connection  The factual history of St Valentine begins in the third century AD when Valentine (Valentinius) was a Christian priest in the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius The Second. This was a time of persecution of the early Christians. It was also a time when Claudius had decreed that no marriages should take place, on the ground that young unmarried males would make better soldiers than those who were married! Valentine however, secretly performed marriage services for the young lovers in defiance of the tyrannical ruling, and was arrested. It is recorded that whilst in prison he miraculously restored the sight of the daughter of his Judge, Asterias. Despite mingled promises and threats on the part of the Prefect of Rome, Valentine refused to abjure his faith and was condemned to be first beaten with clubs, and then to be beheaded. On his path to Martyrdom he was accompanied by his former Judge Asterias, who together with all of his family, had converted to Christianity. Valentine wrote a farewell message to the daughter of Asterias which he signed 'Your Valentine'. The date of the martyrdom of St. Valentine was 14 February in the year 290 AD. This was a fateful date, since it was on that date that the Roman Feast Of Lupercalia was celebrated by the young men and women of the ancient city. It was popularly accepted that on that date the Birds chose their mates, and so, in harmony with the rhythms of nature, young eligible girls made decorated, ribboned tokens on which they wrote their names, and placed them in an urn. The young men picked a token from the urn, and the following year paid court to the chosen girl. A fateful dovetailing of significant events therefore took place which ensured the immortalization of the Saint - his martyrdom for the combined and inseparable ideals of Divine and Romantic love on that fateful feast day of the Old World. Legend has it that a pink Almond tree, a symbol of Eternal love blossomed from the grave of the Saint Even the ancient exchange of tokens in the form of Valentine cards continues today as each year the Saint's legacy is celebrated. So you ask. Whats all of this have to do with Ireland? The story of how the remains of St. Valentine came to Ireland started way back in the 17th century. At the time there was a Carmelite priest in Dublin, in the Liberties, called Fr. John Spratt. By all accounts he seems to have been a man of boundless energy as he was very much involved with the poor and destitute of the area. He began the building of the present Church in 1825 which was designed by Sir George Papworth, who was also responsible for building the Pro Cathedral the previous year, 1824. In 1835, he visited Rome. While there he was asked to preach at the famous Jesuit Church, the Gesu. Apparently his fame as a preacher had gone before him probably brought by some Jesuits who had been in Dublin. The elite of Rome flocked to hear him and he received many tokens of esteem from the doyens of the church. Pope Gregory XVI (16th) made him a gift of the remains of St. Valentine. On November 10th, 1836 the remains of the Saint arrived in Dublin and were brought to Whitefriar St. Church. The Archbishop of Dublin at the time, Dr. Murray, received the remains and presided at the Solemn High Mass to mark the occasion. For some time, the presence of the remains of St. Valentine in Whitefriar St. Church, caused the proverbial seven day wonder. Then, with the death of Fr. Spratt, devotion began to disappear and the relics from the Church, to be relegated to some back room to collect dust. 40 years ago, as a result of major renovations, St. Valentine has been restored to his rightful place with a specially designed altar and shrine. Irene Broe has carved a statue depicting the Saint holding a crocus plant, the symbol of spring. |
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14.2.05 04:48 |
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The Irish Matchmaker
Irish Heritage E-mail Group **A special thank you to Steeler, who was kind enough to re-send this to me after I lost it. Click on the above link to join this group. The Irish Matchmaker  Next to the wedding invitation, sitting under the light with a crucifix filament, is a letter just arrived from England. It reads something like this: "Dear Sir, I am a 68 year old widow, devout Roman Catholic, with property and pension worth £40,000. I am looking for companionship in a respectable and responsible husband. Age and looks are of no particular concern, only that he must be a gentleman. Please can you help? I shall be visiting Lahinch in October." The pink paper enfolds a grainy colour photo of a grey-haired woman, standing in front of a fountain. "And that," says Willie Daly, "is just one of the hundreds of sad letters I have sitting in my files." We sip warm, sweet tea in Daly's bungalow, overlooking the rugged patchwork of fields leading down to the Atlantic Ocean. The land grows dark as I speak to the last of the Irish matchmakers. For 27 years Daly has been matching couples. Twenty seven years on a 63 acre farm, living with his wife, seven children and 30 head of cattle, surrounded on all sides by the bachelor farmers of County Clare. The phone hardly ever stops ringing as we sit and talk in the casual squalor of his kitchen. Daly launches into Gaelic upon answering each and every call. Everyone wants, it seems, to speak to "The Matchmaker". In the massive ledgers and files scattered around his house, under the beds, tables, and on the floor, are contained the names of thousands of men and women, lonely, looking for a spouse. The names come not only from Ireland but from America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and, of course, from "across the water." The west of Ireland is traditional matchmaking country. With the recent death of Dan Paddy Andy O'Sullivan in County Kerry, said to be the greatest matchmaker and accredited with putting together 399 marriages in his lifetime, Willie Daly is the only traditional matchmaker left in Ireland. It has brought him fame. Yet he is not the driving force behind matchmaking. The real problem facing many of those living in rural Ireland, particularly men holding to the land, is that the younger generation have by and large departed for the city. The farmers are left behind, living alone with their parents - living in a pre-1950s era. These rural men can grow up lacking the social skills necessary to court a partner, leaving city women to refer to them as "mammy's boys". For example, Daly has a neighbour on the next farm, in his seventies and still living with his 96 year old mother. A potential match appeared to be going well until the neighbour came up to him one day with a sour look on his face. Daly asked what was wrong: "Willie," the man replied, "she's grand but me mother doesn't approve." And the match ended there and then. The famous Irish playwright John B Keane once summed up this blighted life, saying: "There are thousands of elderly bachelors in Kerry and hereabouts who have never once lain with a woman." Daly says that there are 28 men to every one woman living in the county, many like his neighbour. In earlier times these bachelor farmers would have relied on the services of an uncle, brother-in-law or some other male relative to arrange a marriage with a local girl. However, farmers who were dependent on the death of their parents for the inheritance of a small farm were often unable to marry young. This gave rise to the adage: "Protestants marry early for love, Catholics marry late for land". In addition, many small holdings were too isolated for the men and women to meet members of the opposite sex. Hence the matchmaker would be called in. Each county would support perhaps three or four of these individuals. The matchmaker would be a knowledgeable man (almost never a woman) perhaps poorly-educated, but nonetheless well-versed in local lore and traditions. He would certainly know each and every family within a 15 mile radius. "He would have a charm for the job," says Daly, pronouncing "charm" as "chairm" in his soft-spoken Clare accent, "like you'd have someone with a charm for working tin and another with a charm for curing ringworm or sick cows." Armed with his knowledge, the matchmaker would suggest a 'match' between the daughter of one family and the son of another. Negotiations would take place to settle the size of a dowry, whether one set of parents or a brother or sister would still live with the newly weds, the amount of land thrown into the deal and the cut or fee taken by the matchmaker. The resulting marriage would be very similar to the arranged marriages of the Hindu or Jewish religions, and to those taking place in Korea, where a professional matchmaker can charge thousands of pounds for his services. The couple might only have met once or twice before. Matchmaking is, and was, a male oriented business and it would not have been uncommon for a match to be made between a 60 or 70 year old man and woman in her late teens or early twenties. One of the locals on Daly's books, 72, had not slept with a woman since he was 12! (It once transpired, remarks Daly, that a young man of 20 married a woman in her sixties, purely for her land and her money. Unfortunately for him, she lived until well into her nineties!). True matchmaking was felt to have died out during the 1950s. Only the 'tinkers', or traditional travellers, really carried on the practice. This was an attempt to keep their bloodline pure. However, it often meant being paired up with a first cousin or other relative!. When the era of the "big dances" arrived, Nature was allowed to take its own course. Young people were able to meet one another and the need for a matchmaker fell away. This was during the mid-1950s, when Ireland underwent mass emigration. However, a brief glance through the "matchmaking" columns in Dublin's Evening Herald, the Evening Press., or in Ireland's Own and The Farmer's Journal, will tell you that the matchmaking process is undergoing a revival. The advertisements may lack the lusty nature of many of our "personal" columns, but there are hundreds upon hundreds of them in each paper. Many are from bachelor farmers, a smaller number from city folk or women. A typical ad reads: "Unwanted male, 25, needs lady to give back the joys of life and love." In addition, there is a massive matchmaking festival held after the harvest every September, in the spa town of Lisdoonvarna. This is Daly's home territory. Although more of a tourist spectacle now, it still draws thousands from across Ireland, some in search of a spouse, as it has done for the past 150 years. Daly says he goes mainly for the "craic", the Gaelic word for fun and conversation. He also explains, with a casual shrug of his thick farmer's arms, that besides himself, a priest has recently opened a "marriage bureau" in Knock, County Mayo. It is apparently doing a roaring trade. He expresses great admiration for the priest, Father Michael Keen, and the two often communicate. Indeed, Daly appears to be on good terms with all the local parish priests, and it's not uncommon to spot him chatting away with one or another, discussing the season's hurling. He is a man with a dreamer's eyes and manners - probably the sort of boy who was constantly told off at school for looking out of the window. His handsome, weathered face is covered by a thick beard, black, turning silver, and he constantly smoothes the unruly white locks which fall down to his shoulders. He stares out, past the Bronze Age ring fort sitting on his land, to the ramshackle farmhouse where he was born 50 years ago. He tells me his story: "My father was an old man when I grew up, me with my two sisters," he states softly, mournfully, "and I was never able to get close to him. But he could have been a matchmaker himself, he knew most of the people aroundabouts and had been born here, on the farm, himself. Once or twice he did suggest that this a-one or that-a-one might marry someone he had in mind. So I did have a bit of a feel for the matchmaking from him." The sorrow apparent in Daly's voice when talking about his father may give a clue to his matchmaking drive. He seems to have an empathy with the lonely and old farmers dotted around the countryside, continually singing their praises: "I saw my neighbours, good, fine people, dying off, alone, and the farmhouses and way of life going to ruin," he says. "There was no-one for them, and without a real knowledge of what I was doing, I started introducing people to one another." Since that time, during which he himself got married to his wife Marie (without the need for a match), Daly has brought together hundreds of couples. There have been over one hundred marriages - including doctors, carpenters, teachers, farmers and farmhands. And only one divorce, so he tells me, has resulted. The process by which he operates is simple: "Word has spread about me over the years and people often as not approach me, saying, 'Willie, can you help?' So I try and match them with an opposite. Always an opposite if I can; I think opposites complement each other." It isn't really quite as easy as that. Each individual must be carefully interviewed, details taken of their age (approximate for women - he never asks, just guesses), physical appearance, personality and career. Photos are never used, as Daly likes to preserve "a little anticipation" for the first meet. The details are entered by hand into a ledger. One of his daughters, Marie, now helps with the interviewing, because of the huge demand for his time. The various names are cross-checked to see if a suitable partner can be found. Daly's only rule at this stage is that he will never introduce a "mean man" to any woman. Nor does he think he should help young men find a match - at their age they should easily be able to do it themselves (the youngest man he has dealt with is 27). However, he says he has helped several men to get an extra bedfellow - extra marital, that is: "The fellas I see doin' it always seem to have control of it," he remarks without a touch of irony: "A legitimate affair can enhance a marriage, I believe." A few 'temporary' arrangements have also been made for single men and women. In a serious match the nervous couple will be introduced to each other in a pub, possibly under Daly's watchful gaze. Conversation, and possibly a bit of "craic", will take place. If all goes well, they will agree to see each other again, at which time Daly may or may not be present. He charges nothing for his services, but will often receive gifts worth up to £100 for a successful match (one leading to a marriage). His wife was once sent a tumble drier by an elderly, rich American man whom Daly had failed to match - but who had been grateful for the effort made to dry his wet clothes in front of their fire! There have been problems and some failures, however. Five times during their life, the Daly's have sailed close to financial ruin. Matchmaking is a non-profit making pursuit, and financial security has only recently been achieved with the acquisition of a pub and restaurant in nearby Ennistymon town. In addition, Daly doesn't seem to hold too much truck with the opinions of modern, educated women. He says that it is they, and not men, who have changed most in attitude over the past 27 years: "If they're too educated, it damages their appetite for romance and that kind of thing," he states earnestly. And he reacts with surprise when a woman turns down a prospective match with a farmer 20 or even 30 years her senior. The problem is that every 60 or 70 year old male is described as "a fine looking man, big, with a full head of hair." But Daly insists that: "A young girl would take the stress out of an old fella's life." He was once threatened with legal action by a lady calling up at one in the morning. She complained that her match "had touched her" on their first date. Daly wrote off the incident, saying that she was a social worker and was upset at his refusal to allow her to help with the matchmaking. He also managed to insult a long standing female friend when he recently suggested he make a match for her. Another woman, standing in his pub, called him "a right dick head" as he sang a Gaelic folk song only a few feet away. Judging by the letters, phone calls, and visits, however, there are plenty of women willing to stand by his judgement. Only last month he was visited by four English ladies, searching for husbands But there are others who are dubious about the existence of any "real" matchmaking. Many of the local teenagers laugh at the idea, accustomed as they are to a world of Sky TV, grunge music and discos. The priest in Castlebar, County Mayo, where I first met Daly, believed that matchmakers were a throwback to a past better forgotten. Decklan Hassett, who runs the Kilshanny B&B near to Daly's farm, thinks that matchmaking is put on purely for the tourists' benefit. Dick Lynch, a local hotelier in Lisdoonvarna, calls modern matchmaking "a gimmick" and John Petty, who lives in the same town, says: "There's no such thing as matchmaking. It's all down to Nature, same as if you were any place else." All of which is strange, seeing as these people only live a few miles down the road from Daly. A sensitive man, he is stung by such criticism - and seems to genuinely believe that he is helping others less fortunate than himself. But Clare is a poor county, with close communities, where you can live for 20 years as a "blowin" (an outsider). Apparent success and attention can cause resentment. It is true that Daly has expanded his efforts nationwide over the past year, talking to the old folk at the Dublin dances, placing the odd ad (on someone else's behalf) into a matchmaking column and introducing couples living in Ireland's other cities. On his sister's advice, he says. But you could hardly call it a commercial enterprise. He doesn't charge a fee, has no assistant or computer, nor does he advertise In short, he has none of the trappings commonly associated with a professional dating agency. Everything that looks vaguely modern, in the house or outside of it, is, you realise, second hand or falling apart. Material possessions don't appear to matter to the man. He seems to have a sketchy understanding of the modern world, but his feet are firmly planted in the old - the old world of the wandering folk lore teachers known as "shenachie". He speaks fluent Gaelic, for example, yet misspells a sign written in English which advertises his new restaurant. As the last spool on the interview tape comes to an end, I ask Daly about the future. He makes a casual reply referring to "his clients". We both laugh, acknowledging his slip of the tongue. I could be cynical and say that the man was after some form of recognition and commercial success. I could, had I not met so many locals such as "Ikey" and Eamonn, heavy set, well-dressed farmers sitting in the pubs of Ennistymon, prepared to swear by him and call him "a real gentleman". And, of course, for the latest wedding invitation, sitting under the light with the crucifix filament. |
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14.2.05 19:00 |
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ya gotta get this!
 Atmosphere Lite Just found this on J-Walk. It's so cool! It's a programme that supplies background atmospheric sounds on your PC. It's free, and you can play with the sounds, mixing them. Right now I am listening to the soothing surf with night birds and light rain. >>>Click here |
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15.2.05 23:03 |
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times gone by
Daily Ireland The good old days by Danny Morrison  If you are under 18 - in fact, if you are under 28 or 38 - I would prefer if you discontinued reading now. This sympathy notice has got nothing to do with you and is strictly for elderly people of my generation who remember the good old days. In the good old days there were no iPods, video phones, alcopops, Playstations, pierced noses or bellybuttons. One’s hair was licked and stuck down, not gelled and stood up. Men’s hands were calloused. Any woman worth her melt had varicose veins. Only the insurance man and priest owned a car. Everybody went to confession, Mass and Communion at least once a week, and only in England did people win the pools, get divorced or strangled. (Only one lie has been told about the good, old days and that is that we all loved the Twelfth.) Yes, and there was no such thing as a couch potato. In the days before remote controls one had to physically rise from the chair or settee, cross the linoleum, approach the radiogramme and switch on a knob. You had time to clear out the ashes, light the fire, eat a fry and smoke two Park Drives before the set warmed up. Then you could manually tune in your favourite radio station from a choice of four, or in the case of your TV switch a knob for your choice of BBC or UTV which you could watch until closedown at 10.30. Life was so simple. Fair enough, after every gusty night you had to send one of the male offspring that you sired up into the cobwebbed and sooty glory-hole to take verbal instructions via granny in her favourite chair, Ma in the hall and you on the landing, on which direction the aerial should be turned for optimum reception. Those were the days when you could tell honest Protestant homes not just by their flagpoles but by their firm, proud and secure aerials on the outside and their licences in the sideboard ready to be produced for inspection. But you knew which areas wanted a united Ireland because sentinels kept guard for the detection van and in their sleeked homes the cunning natives always kept the TV volume at low. Not one outside aerial was to be seen, but each telltale home had a son who resembled a chimney sweep. Folks, I am feeling nostalgic because last week we parted with an old but working TV and bought a TV which needs a 40-button remote that could have landed the Huygens probe on Titan, were I able to use it. There was nothing wrong with the old television, but when, for my birthday, my brother bought me a CD/DVD player (whose remote has 39 buttons) I discovered that we needed a new TV with two SCART sockets if we were to be able to continue watching the video. The new TV is great but we can no longer record programmes and, ironically, might have to buy a new video – if they are still making them. Our coffee table now looks like NASA control. There are remotes for the radio, the TV, the cable box, the CD/DVD, the video, as well as a remote handset for the house telephone and a mobile phone connected to a charger. With help from Age Concern we got them all tuned in. It’s very simple, really. You need one remote, let’s call it A, to switch on the TV; another, B, to surf channels; go back to A to work the teletext, but use B to view the cable guide. For some reason we can no longer switch through the channels by using the video remote, C, but have to use A to activate C. We were told that C would be overridden if we pressed D, the remote for the CD/DVD, and vice versa, but they have been tuned to different ‘EXT’ channels and so to access D you have to go back to A and press a button which deactivates B. The CD/DVD came with a book slightly smaller than ‘War and Peace’. I have been reading it for a month now in bed each night and thought I had the plot worked out. The player has a facility called ‘Locking the disc tray (Child Lock)’ and explains that this is ‘to prevent children from opening it’ whereas, in practice, it penalises adults. ‘Analyse This’ has been locked in it since we got it. The booklet does explain that to remove the disk you can unlock the tray when it is in ‘standby mode’. So I went to the index to find out what ‘standby mode’ was and there between ‘Speakers’ and ‘Subtitles’ it was not. The new television is the only thing that works though the screen which has a habit of shrinking and enlarging depending on its mood. We don’t use our DVD player, nor, since we got the TV, the video which can now only play with blue waves undulating across the scene, making one seasick. We spoke to the salesman in the television shop. “Ah! You have heterodyne interference,” he explained with aplomb. Is there anything we can do, we asked in desperation. He smiled. “No problem! What you need is a new remote which will cure everything..." |
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16.2.05 20:00 |
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satanic
Guardian **...and when they get done studying Satan, they can study dopers as well :p Know thine enemy Simon Jeffery and agencies Thursday February 17, 2005  St Michael subduing Satan - click on thumbnail for larger view The Vatican's exorcism rule book warns priests the devil "goes around like a roaring lion looking for souls to devour", but such is the perceived rise in his worship that a Catholic university is offering clerics classes to better identify their foe. The two-month course at Regina Apostolorum, one of Rome's most prestigious pontifical universities, has arisen out of concern in the Vatican over a series of high profile court cases linking ritualised murders to Satanism. In one case in Italy, seven people believed to belong to a satanic sect were ordered to stand trial for their alleged role in three killings. Prosecutors alleged that one of the victims, a 19-year-old girl stabbed to death in 1998, may have been targeted because her killers believed she was a personification of the Virgin Mary. In addition to the three murders, the sect is suspected of having forced two of its members to take their own lives. According to an Italian parliamentary group, there are as many as 1,000 satanic sects in the country. The courses, starting today, will deal with demonology, the presence of the notion of the devil in sacred texts, and the pathology and medical treatment of people suffering from possession. The Vatican is also concerned about a growing number of young people who use the internet to develop personal forms of Satanism out of sight of the police units monitoring the more established sects. "It's a more spontaneous and hidden phenomenon, a problem of loneliness and isolation, a problem of emptiness, that is fulfilled by the values of Satanism," one of the teachers, Carlo Climati, a specialist on youth culture and Satanism, told the Associated Press. In 1999, the Vatican issued its first rule book since 1614 on how to drive out devils. Running to 90 pages, the leather bound De Exorcismis et supplicationibus quibusdam identified "speaking in unknown languages, discerning distant or hidden things, and displaying a [unnatural] physical strength" as signs of demonic possession. Unlike its seventeenth century predecessor, De Exorcismis warned against confusing possession with mental illness. Mr Climati said his Satanism course would "explain how to distinguish between someone who is ill and requiring medical care, and one is possessed by demons". Pope John Paul II is a fervent believer that the devil, who he calls a "cosmic liar and murderer", is a real presence in the world and has personally carried out exorcisms. In a book called I miei sei Papi, the late Cardinal Jacques Martin recounted how in 1982 the then Bishop of Spoleto brought to the Pope a woman thought to be possessed. "From outside, we could hear her screams. The Pope delivered several exorcisms, but in vain. Then he said, 'Tomorrow, I shall say Mass for you', and she suddenly became normal again." |
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18.2.05 00:18 |
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rss feed
Not that it's very important, but is anyone else having a problem with their blog's rss feed? Just for drill, I subscribe to my own blog with Bloglines, and for several days I have noticed that there was nothing showing up, and it said there was a problem with the feed. So today I went to edit it, but the URL looked all right. It was just BLANK. I clicked on Rambling Irishman's feed thingie, and it came out fine. But me, I'm blank. :'( Do you think this is some kind of divine comment on the vacuousness of my life? Am I doomed to wander the earth with a page of empty XML? Am I really invisible? Will I ever see my rss feed again? Does anyone really care? lol Stay tuned... |
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18.2.05 04:28 |
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HIV negative?
Got your attention? I just noticed that above my blog it says that HIV negative adults can volunteer to test a vaccine for HIV. Now let's drop back and study this propositon, and is Google making a comment on my lack of social life or wat? First off, if you are HIV negative, would you want to even think about going near a lab where they study and fup around with HIV? Then, what's the procedure? Do they innoculate you with their experimental serum and then send you out to have sex with diseased people so they can see if you end up dead in 10 years? Just what is the pay for this? Will you be around to spend it? Oh, excuse me, I forgot--it said VOLUNTEER. O rite! I'm sure the only people stupid enough to volunteer for this are people who are already out there fupping their brains out and worried they might already have HIV, which they probably already do! I guess I'm just not into medical research :p |
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18.2.05 04:40 |
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Good bye cruel world
 **noooo, leave my bathtub alone! I think the world is ending! I have the landlord's nephew in my loo, bog, whatever you want to call it, and he is ripping it apart in an attempt to repair dryrot. Right now he is trying to get the bathtub out, and he is shaking the whole house and turning the air blue with his cussing. My walls are thudding and squeaking and groaning and creaking, and I'm sure the cats I have stashed in the spare room are going bonkers, but I don't want to chance going in there to comfort them in case one runs out the door because the nephew has the front door open, and my cats don't go outside. I am trying to stay out of his way by sitting in my bedroom, doing this, and speaking soothingly to the bird, the hamster and the rest of the cats in my room, most of whom are under the bed, never to come out. I feel like any minute a bomb might go off. It already looks like a bomb went off in there. Perhaps a bomb going off might have made his job getting the tub out a little easier. If you pray, say one for me and my loo please. :'( |
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19.2.05 22:46 |
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Euro symbol
This is a geeky type thing, so you normal people might want to skip over it, but I just learned how to fix a problem I have been having with my machine, which is like one of the very first or second Windows machines ever made--well, maybe not that old, but Windows 95 anyway. Don't laugh. My OS of choice is actually Windows 98 because I can control it so much better than the newer versions. I can limit the processes to under a handful. Anyway, when I post news stories, on some blog sites, the Euro symbol would show up as a box or a question mark, and I couldn't fix it. It wouldn't even copy and paste correctly. Today I found out from Google that Micro$oft still has a download for Win 95 to implement the Euro symbol, and it works like a charm! Look here: €€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€ I'm probably the last person in the world to figure this out, but I'm proud of myself anyway :p |
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21.2.05 10:18 |
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These bloggers need help!
Committee to Protect Bloggers: FREE MOJTABA AND ARASH DAY SET FOR TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 **I did not know anything about this until I read it on our own asfalloth, who made a comment on my blog about the euro, so I went to read his blog and found it. I followed some links and this is what I came up with. Since we are all bloggers, it might be good for us to familiarize ourselves with this cause. Thank you, asfalloth, for bringing this to my attention. FREE MOJTABA AND ARASH DAY SET FOR TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 The Committee to Protect Bloggers has set Tuesday, February 22nd as “Free Mojtaba and Arash Day.” Arash Sigarchi is still in Lakan prison in the Iranian city of Rashat. Fellow Iranian blogger Mojtaba Saminejad has been released from prison in Tehran but still faces charges. They have both been deprived of their liberty by the Iranian government for expressing opinions on their blogs. Here is what we encourage you to do: * Dedicate your blog for the entire day to Mojtaba and Arash. Write only about their situation, and the danger to bloggers in general, or leave your blog blank with just the demand, “Free Mojtaba and Arash!” on it. This is the major action. If you do nothing else, do this. Let there be a pause in the daily business of the blogosphere in the name of freedom. * Download one of our banners (or here) or buttons and post it on your page. Sponsor get-togethers, in cyberspace or in real space. * Write letters and emails to representatives of the Iranian government. (and here) and to representatives of your own. Request that Arash be freed and Mojtaba’s charges be dismissed. * Call local and national press. Let them know what is happening. * If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, take your message outside. Make a sign, be seen, deliver letters in person to representatives of the Iranian government or to your own. A former Iranian blogger detainee, Sina Motallebi, credited the efforts of bloggers for his release. Let’s do it again. For Arash and Mojtaba. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 IS FREE MOJTABA AND ARASH DAY |
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21.2.05 18:59 |
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