Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

A view of the world from an Irish hole

Month: September, 2008

Ugandan minister urges miniskirt ban

The BBC is reporting that Uganda’s minister for Integrity and ethics has called for a ban on the wearing of miniskirts. This is because they are causing traffic accidents and a lowering of the moral climate in his country. He sees wearing a short skirt as the same as going naked, and considers miniskirts one of the many ills facing his country along with – you’ve guessed it – homosexuality and shreeded wheat. The minister has said that miniskirts distract many drivers who are “weak mentally”. But most observers believe that it is the minister himself who is mentally weak.

There are some conservative men who are obsessed with women wearing short skirts. They are usually sick, because, while denouncing them they secretly fantasised about where those long legs lead, ventilating thoughts like “Gor, I want to get me some o’ that” behind their copies of El Viaje orThe Sacred Heart Messenger. People will remember the Spanish judge (no doubt a loyal supporter of that Christian general Francisco Franco) who said that a rape victim had more or less asked for what had happened to her because she was wearing a miniskirt.

When I see a girl wearing a short skirt I do not believe she is telling the world that she is somehow “easy” and sexually available. If she is sending a message it is that she has good legs which she wants the world to see, and let’s face it there is so much ugliness in this world that anyone who wishes to display things that are pleasant should be rewarded. It is just as probable that short-skirted females are not sending out any messages at all, but are merely expressing their right to dress as they wish. In countries blessed with warm climates the concept of wearing long clothes when the temperature is hovering in the high thirties must be hellist.

Cupla focail agus pog someone else’s hol

Recently I was discussing the Irish language with a friend. I mentioned my deep love for Irish, but how, when it came to the dreaded Leaving Certificate, my bottle smashed and I opted for the Pass course instead, receiving a rather impressive “A” mark in the final exam. I felt that my good mark owed something to my success in the oral exam, whereupon my friend stated that he hated oral Irish exams, and indeed wondered whether there was an anal Irish exam. I replied that there was hardly any need as the Irish language had been fucked up the arse for decades anyway.

Well done Cavan Echo!

The Cavan Echo has attained its one hundredth edition – and they said it wouldn’t last. Its survival is proof that there is a need and a market for a plurality of voices in the world of local media. In 1956 there was a short-lived movement in favour of greater freedom of expression. It’s slogan was: “Let a Hundred Flowers bloom, and let a hundred schools of tought contend.” There are people in Cavan and in Ireland who are afraid of such pluralism. For them the world of expression should take its cue from Benito Mussolini who once replied to an awkward question by telling him to “Eat his dinner and shut up”. It is right that in twenty-first century Cavan that the only time people ought to open their mouths is to eat (and pray)?

Thanks to the Cavan Echo many flowers have bloomed here in Cavan and it has thereby become a more pleasant smelling place.

Interview in the Post

Well done Ronan. That was a great interview you did with me in The Post. You really succeeded in capturing “the man behind the beard”. Congratulations too to Andrew on taking such a great ‘photo – that camera must be on borrowed time by now!

I like the photo very much but I can assure my readers that I am not going to be like a certain sad individual who (allegedly) saved all the numerous incidemtns when his silly face appeared in a local paper in a cuttings album which he kept in his bathroom. Each morning he would thumb through these and exclaim: “Ooooh! What a dish!!!” and give himself a Barclays’ on the spot.

Headline news

As someone with experience of the newspaper world I’ve often wondered about whether sub-editors are really humans or whether they are merely androids from another time/space dimension with merely the outward appearances of humans? A friend of mine (who wishes to preserve her identity) has send me the following link to a site which points towards a real lack of intelligent life-forms among those writing headlines. In fact, after reading these, I said that I’d never poke fun at the Anglo-Celt again! 

The 20 Funniest Headlines Ever!

The HSE

I’ve recently a great thing about the Irish HSE. If you rearrange the letters and add an iT you get shite!

Priceless

I sometmes feel like the late Cyril Fletcher on BBC’s That’s Life! because people send me the weirdest things. Take the following:

S-Class Merc – €100000

 

Socks and togs for the lads – €600

 

Financial support for the Co. Board – €20000

 

Scoreboard Sponsorship at Lavey GFC – €5000

 

Being caught undergoing a brain transplant, in the disabled toilet, in your own pub, at 4 in the morning, by a foreign national – PRICELESS.

 

As I was just saying ...

As I was just saying ...

 Now I know the identity of this hapless person, but I would like to launch a competition, a type of “Spot the Wanker” contest. Clue: I can state categorically that this is NOT county manager Jack Keys in disguise.

Bold automatic

First Cavanman: What d’ya do when your washing-machine breaks down?

Second Cavanman: I give ‘er a good baitin’

Gone fishin!

Two men are out just fishing at

Killykeen and drinking beer.
Almost silently, so as not to scare

 the fish, Pat says, ‘I think I’m

 gonna divorce my wife. She

hasn’t spoken to me in over 2

months.’

His friend Mick l continues slowly

 sipping his beer then thoughtfully

says,
‘You’d better think it over, Pat. 

 Women like that are hard to find.’

Trouble in paradise

The foreign ministryt of the usually tranquil and sedate Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan has stated that this paradise on earth has seen heavy fighting in the north of the Stalinist / Las Vegas capital Ashgabat, in which about twenty policemen were killed. Who would be unhappy in this state, not unlike Ireland, where all but the most important hospitals and schools in the capital have been closed and most have to eke out a subsistence existence? Early reports spoke of Islamic militants, but then the Foreign ministry spoke of a criminal gang linked to drug smuggling. Islam has traditionally been fairly weak here, far more so than in neighbouring Uzbekistan. The prayer leaders are appointed and paid by the government and must pray for the health of the president and the memory of his predecessor (father?) the great if tiny Turkmenbashi. The country is known to be on the transport route for Afghani heroine, but it has been for years with the connivance of the authorities, so why should things flarre up now, unless the traffickers refused to pay higher bribes to the police to look the other way.

This is worrying for president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (that’s his name). It is enough to give him a serious bout of toothatche, which he, as a qualified dentist, is probably in a good position to alleviate.

But the fact remains this sort of thing never happened during the era of Turkmenbashi. The only violence to occur was meted out, fairly liberally, by the police to the few people brave enough to put their heads above the ramparts. He has obviously taken his eye off the switch. The question is: where will it end? Maybe Turkmenbashi’s larger-than-life statue in Central Square will stop moving.

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