My new look. Fresh from an apparition in Lourdes and a stint on a peasant’s cloak in Guadeloupe, the BVM herself is now appearing on my blog posts. She will be representing the Irreverent Mother in pictorial (Gravatar) form. Isn’t she lovely. Is it just me, or does she look like Penelope Cruz? (It’s probably just me.)
So the blog is a year old today, and so far has had 3,643 hits. I’m not really quite sure what to say, so perhaps I’ll borrow the words of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon: “Thank you. Come again.”
Apparently there’s a Gay Cure app, now available on iPhone and iPad. The Guardian reports on complaints made to Apple regarding an app that provides “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus”.
As a practicing Christian and practicing homosexual (no, the two are not mutually exclusive) I find this all a bit much. For one thing, Jesus didn’t have an iPhone.
Well I think that’s what this video is about. I kind of lost track of it somewhere around the magnets. Seriously though, this video is quite lovely; I think it’s the choice of music. It’s definitely worth watching a second time, on full screen, just in order to peer at the science experiments to see if you can fathom what’s going on. It’s a science nerd’s paradise. (I can imagine this video being very popular down the east end of campus.)
As I’m sure you will all know, I have great time and admiration for that fantastic British comedy duo: The Two Ronnies, and for Ronnie Barker most especially. It was with great sadness that wordsmiths around the world learned of his passing, some two years ago. He really was a marvelously clever and funny big man. I adore his wordplay, and he was instrumental in my realising that smart people could be funny, a fact that I had overlooked while in was being bullied in school. Alas, Ronnie Barker is no more, living on only in television reels and youtube clips, and in the hearts and minds of millions of fans.
However, a bird in the hand is better than two in Shephard’s Bush and it appears with this in mind that the BBC made a new series, starring Ronnie Corbett, The One Ronnie. Or more so it was because Ronnie C has turned eighty this year, but my God does he still look marvellous in drag. Anyway, here’s a sketch from the new show; fans will of course recognise it as an homage to the Fork Handles and Ice Cream Parlour sketches. Ronnie Barker might not be around to write them anymore, but it’s just as good.
They actually had to advertise text messages to Irish people. They would be the “next big thing” or so we were told, yet they never took off… At decade later and I touch-text, ask any of my friends; they have sore thumbs trying to keep up with me.
Esat Digifone made this amazing ad for it though. The lovely Louth accent was a nice touch.
I was facebooking a friend earlier about his recent trip to China. I decided to be all smart-ass and write him a comment in Chinese, so I used Google Translator:
Originally I said in English:
“Cool. Fancy meeting up for a drink and telling me all about it? Did you manage to buy any babies off the Chinese government when you were there? Niamh and I are considering getting one for around the house. I think we’ll call it Prawn Crackers. “Prawn Crackers, come in for your dinner!” Domestic bliss…”
And then I brought it back into Google Translator to see what my friend would see when he translated it:
“Cool, Sometimes like to drink a cup and tell me all about it? Purchase of any baby you happened when you where our government? Niamh and I are considering getting one at home. I think we will call it flakes. “Lobster peices for your dinner!” Family well-being…”
The great thing about this is that Google Translator envisions great prosperity in our house in the future. Lobster pieces, no less! On a lesser note, the child will not be academically stunning or at least she’ll be a bit of a flake. Oh well, can’t win them all.
Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ll go back to eating cold beans from a can.
Look at the three images above. Until this evening, if a Chinese person in mainland China googled “tiananmen square” they would only see the last picture. Now they can see all three, or at least Google no longer censures the first two. The Chinese government still have their nets, but nets have holes.
King Solomon's Mines - H. Rider Haggard
Glengarry Glen Ross - David Mamet
The Tempest - William Shakespeare
The Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neal Hurston
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundeva
American Colonies - Alan Taylor
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Marx A Very Short Introduction - Peter Singer
The Playboy of the Western World - J.M. Synge
John Bull's Other Island - G.B. Shaw
Kathleen Ní Houlihan - Y.B. Yeats & Lady Gregory
The Plough and the Stars - Sean O'Casey
The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors - Roddy Doyle
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
The Blackwater Lightship - Colm Toibín
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Macbeth - William Shakespeare
WIde Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
