Creationism just got techno on our asses.

Long post, read it if you want. Personally I'm so stunned at the reasoning and sheer all round lunacy displayed below I had to read it twice before it sunk in just how crazy these folk are.
As an avowed agnostic, i.e a great big fence sitter, leaning heavily towards athesim, I often say things like, 'oh now look Za`zoo, let the people believe whatever they want, sure they're not doing any harm. If it comforts them to believe in a big dude with a beard and robes will be there when they die, what of it?'
But then just as I am at peace with the world and all its many foibles The Salon writes up the following and my peace of mind is completely shattered, utterly blunderbussed into oblivion.
Observe.

.May 31, 2007 | PETERSBURG, Ky -- The Creation Museum swung open its stegosaurus-guarded gates to the public Monday, and I have to say it's out of this world. For those of us raised in natural history Meccas like the American Museum in New York, the Smithsonian in Washington, or the Field in Chicago, the beautifully designed museum induces an eerie vertigo. All the familiar characters are here: T. rex, giant skeletons of triceratops and apatosaurus, a pterosaur spreading its wings above the crowd, live exhibits of birds, amphibians and reptiles, and the dripping, hooting and chirping soundtrack of the primeval forest. There are also a couple of unfamiliar faces, for a natural history museum, in the tan and finely muscled bodies of Adam and Eve.

At the ribbon cutting, Ken Ham, the rugged-faced CEO and president of Answers in Genesis, the nonprofit ministry that built the museum, tells an enthusiastic crowd that the Creation Museum will undo the damage done 82 years ago when Clarence Darrow put William Jennings Bryan on the stand in the famous Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn. "It was the first time the Bible was ridiculed by the media in America, and that was a downward turning point for Christendom," Ham says. "We are going to undo all of that here at the Creation Museum. We are going to answer the questions Bryan wasn't prepared to, and show that belief in every word of the Bible can be defended by modern science."

The Book of Genesis, that famous first chapter of the Bible, which Ham's group has interpreted to claim that the universe was created in six 24-hour days a mere 6,000 years ago, serves as the blueprint for the museum. Astronomy, geology and evolution, as they are commonly understood in mainstream science, have no place here. As Ham later tells me, the conclusions of modern science are not to be trusted, as they are biased by the fickle reasoning of man and a modern antagonism toward faith. On the other hand, he says, the Book of Genesis is true "from the first word to the last."


With a staff of nearly 300 employees, Answers in Genesis, devoted to "Biblical apologetics," produces a daily radio program fed to 860 stations, operates a Web site instructing visitors how to out-argue Darwinists, and organizes about 300 traveling lectures each year. It's also a well-oiled money-raising machine and opened the $27 million museum without a penny of debt to banks or lenders.The museum is situated in Petersburg, Ky., just 20 miles southwest of Cincinnati, an area chosen in large part because it's within a one-day drive for two-thirds of the country or 200 million Americans. Recent polls show that 40 percent of all Americans would feel at home with the views put forth in the Creation Museum. Only about an equal percentage accept the underlying message of the country's mainstream science museums. Only 39 percent answer yes to the question, "Do you believe that human beings as we know them developed from earlier species of animals?"

The museum's 49 acres of carefully landscaped grounds are encircled by a tall metal fence. Visitors tempted to enter without paying will be discouraged by armed guards in black state-trooper-like uniforms and attack dogs. On Monday, just outside the fence, a group of 50 die-hard atheists and skeptics are gathered in the light rain under a "Rally for Reason" banner. Overhead, a small airplane pulls a sign that says, "Thou Shalt Not Lie." Edwin Kagin, national legal director for American Atheists, explains that as far as he's concerned, AIG "can teach that things fall up if they want. But we want to make it clear that this nonsense is not accepted by those who do not share its fundamentalist religious views. They are trying to drag us back to the Dark Ages."

Among the damp roadside protesters is Lawrence Krauss, author and physics professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and a member of the advisory board of Defcon: Campaign to Defend the Constitution, the group that paid for the airplane tugging around the Seventh Commandment. Krauss calls the museum "anti-science" and says it reflects an erosion of American science education, posing "a threat to American kids already struggling just to get the basic concept of what science is and how it works."

Inside, the museum is organized according to the "Six C's of History": creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, and the final C, consummation, which isn't given much time or space in the exhibits because there still isn't consensus on just how the apocalypse will come down or who goes to heaven and when. At the Creation exhibit, two young T. rexes peacefully watch fish swim in a placid pond. Two curly-haired robotic kids play nearby. In any other place, this would be the setup for a massacre. But this pre-Noah's-flood Jurassic Park is benign. The animals are vegetarians and plants don't have thorns. The fossil record, says the museum, confirms all of this.

Mark Looy, co-founder of Answers in Genesis, is walking me through the museum. He explains that the great flood is responsible for the fossil record. Plants and animals are distributed in different strata based not on the time of their formation, but on where the flood waters moved them before receding. Those areas where no thorns or other defensive or hostile plants are found, he explains, are pre-flood forms.

Later Ham tells me that his skeptics, who cling to the "millions of years" theory, are wrong about when dinosaurs stalked the Earth. He cites a recent discovery of intact blood vessels in some T. rex tissue, suggesting that the finds are only thousands of years old, not 65 million, as paleontologists say. "They will try to come up with an explanation to keep the fossils old," says Ham, "but we don't need to. The explanation of their age is already right there in the Bible."

For generations, paleontologists have shown that dinosaurs and humans never trod the Earth at the same time, that in fact with the exception of birds (modern-day dinosaurs), they never got within 60 million years of each other on the timeline of natural history. Not so, says Looy. "They all had to exist at the same time because they were all made on the same day. There may not be any fossil evidence showing dinosaurs and people in the same place at the same time. But it is clearly written that they were alive at the same time."
In the Garden of Eden in Genesis, says Ham, when everything was still perfect, animals weren't predators or prey, so the museum's designer, Patrick Marsh, is able to crowd grizzly bears, wildcats, zebras, kangaroos, an iguanodon and several other dinosaurs into the same little chunk of primeval Eden. After the fall, such a scene would result in a bloody mess.

Buddy Davis, a technician and artist who has also made dinosaurs for use in secular exhibits, tells me he's much happier seeing his dinosaurs at the Creation Museum, promoting faith in the Bible. "I want to see God get credit for his creation," he says. "I look around and see so much beauty -- even if it is marred by sin -- and to think that it all just came from an explosion billions of years ago is just wrong. To me it's obvious the hand of God is behind it. As scripture says, 'They are without excuse' who do not believe."

The Garden of Eden presents a series of scenes down a "trail of life." In the first, a bearded, dark-haired Adam beckons to a mountain lion with one outstretched arm, while the other is wrapped around a little lamb. Smaller animals appear drawn to Adam, who is perhaps naming them, God's first assignment for him. A bit farther along we're introduced to Eve, looking like a great big brown Barbie and staring intently into Adam's eyes. Adam and Eve are naked, and Maggie and Tom Thorne, a pair of Christians visiting from Michigan, are smiling at the scene. They agree it seems a little unfair for God to expect two such well-designed specimens not to get around to sinning pretty quickly. A few yards further we see Adam and Eve again, this time standing in a pool of water, their genitals coyly obscured by lily pads. Now they definitely appear to be grappling with the chemistry that will get them in big trouble.
An oversize cobra-like snake makes an appearance, and before you know it, Eve is holding grape-size, blood-colored fruits in her outstretched hand, offering knowledge of good and evil to a flummoxed-looking Adam. "We're not sure what kind of fruit it was, but we do know it wasn't an apple," says Looy, perhaps to demonstrate the kind of questions the several Ph.D. researchers at the museum are now toiling over in the labs behind the walls of the exhibition space.

In the next scene, after the fall from grace, Adam and Eve, looking far less happy than before, are standing next to two lambs they have slaughtered on a sacrificial stone table. The sacrifice has a practical value -- the original couple are now wearing lambskin suits and the lambs are skinless -- and a spiritual one; the lambs are sacrificed, a visitor explains to me, in partial payment for the debt incurred by Adam and Eve for eating the fruit of knowledge. I tell the visitor it seems unfair for the lamb to pay for their mistake. "Well, it wasn't enough," he says. "God had to send his only Son to pay the ultimate price for their sin." When I tell him that sounds kind of extreme, he looks at me and shakes his head slowly a couple of times before moving on.

Inside the Garden of Eden, Nancy Senai, who is visiting from Lansing, Mich., tells me, "It feels pretty nice to have something that is for God and about God, instead of all the evolution in other places." I ask her if she thinks the history presented here is true. "God said it clearly, and I believe it the way he said it," she says. "Everything else is uncertain."

The great flood, which washed away all life on earth, is the key to understand the Catastrophe exhibit and the museum's version of natural history. After Adam and Eve's original sin, God told Noah to build an ark. He sent him two of every kind of land animal to repopulate the earth. Visitors to the museum walk among robotic representations of Noah and his building crew as they construct a supposedly full-scale section of the boat. After Noah has invited his sinning neighbors onto the ark and warned them of the coming flood, they mock him or are dissuaded from heeding his advice by the small pressures of daily life. The door slides shut and they are left behind to drown in the 40-day deluge that formed everything we see on Earth today, from Mt. Everest to Death Valley.In Ham's view, the great flood explains not only where scientists find fossils today but also the topography of the modern world. The Grand Canyon, he informs me, was made in a matter of days or weeks as the waters of the flood rushed away and the land was reclaimed. In the exhibit, you walk through a winding canyonlike corridor with spinning, dizzying lights into a wide-open room with videos, exhibits and diagrams explaining the hydrology of instant canyon-making. Ham says that instant canyon-making is based on the fact that volcanoes, such as Mount St. Helens, created reservoirs of water for a time in their altered topography. When those reservoirs breached, deep grooves were cut by the flowing water, leading to the fast formation of canyons.

After the flood, Noah's descendants multiply again on Earth, but not quickly or broadly enough to satisfy God, who then introduces a slew of new languages to drive people apart, resulting in their dispersal around the globe. The ensuing C-for-Confusion theme is represented through a gritty and menacing back alley postered with newspaper headlines about the rise in abortion, drug use, homosexuality and teen suicide.

The entire exhibit, in fact, is awfully grim. A montage slide show of fetuses, starving kids, swastikas, tourniquet-bound arms ready for the needle bombard the wall in a room with a soundtrack of blaring sirens, boots marching in unison, and crying kids. In the middle of this urban mess is a big wrecking ball with the words "Millions of Years" carved into it. Ham blames the notion that the Earth is quite a bit older than the Bible suggests for just about all the world's problems. Evolution, which requires large amounts of time for small changes to accumulate into larger ones, makes it far too easy for people not to believe the Bible, he says. And that loss of belief "is at the root of modern evil."

Inside the Confusion exhibit, I strike up a conversation with Tim Shaw, a high school student visiting from Florida. "I don't care how long it took to make the Grand Canyon," he tells me. "It's not how old it is that matters to me. What matters is being right with God. Darwin's theory has no God. It can't be right. I don't know if this story is truer than Darwin's theory, but I do know it's better."

That last line alone is enough to send shivers down my weary spine. Might not be truer folks, but it's better. Don't let the facts bother you young man, it just all about how you 'feel.' Huzzah!

The gym

OOOOWOWWWWWYouch.
Eeep.
I'm sitting here this morning, munching a banana and wondering would it be worth sipping my coffee through a straw. I'm in pain see, I can't lift either of my arms over my head because I trained them and my back and shoulders to death yesterday. Ouch. But good ouch.
Because I'm training for the Dublin City Marathon and because I have yet to replace Memnoch, my- evil here let me show you how to fight you weakling- trainer, I have upped my weight training considerably.
Yesterday I raised my weights as my body had adapted to the weights I was previously using.
Today I'm feeling the BURN.
I knew before I even opened my eyes this morning that I was going to suffer. And by golly I was right. So I'm writing this post to remind myself why I do it.

Lifting weights is a terrific way of burning a lot of calories-even when you're resting your body is still working. It takes quite a goodly amount of energy to sustain muscle and it tones a gal's body like you wouldn't believe. It raises your metabolism and forces your body to repair muscle and work over time.
Far too many gals go to the gym and avoid the weights room. A lot of the time I imagine it is because they feel intimidated by the large chaps striding around, clanging weights and grunting and posing in front of the mirrors. To this I would say, don't be. Those chaps did not start off that way, and nine times out of ten they are very helpful indeed should you ask them a question. These dudes know shit, it's like finding a deep well of weight lifting/body shaping knowledge.
Cardio has its place and if you're trying to shed pounds it is very useful, Christ knows I needed it after Christmas, but to really get a the most out of your body I would go out on a limb here and say you need to hit the weights room as well as the bikes/cross trainer/treadmill. You won't suddenly get massive and bulky. Women have about one third of the testosterone men do and frankly, unless you're on steroids, you will never get as big as a man.
And don't use tini-tiny pink dumbbells either. The heavier the weight you use-still doing the movement correctly- the better. Think heavier weight, lower rep (everyone has different opinions on this, but personally I think three sets of eight using the heaviest weight I can is plenty).Don't be afraid to push your body, but be aware of it. Yesterday I watched a gal doing a sort of bicep curl using a 2k weight, she was flicking it up and down without fulling extending the bicep. What's the point of that? The bicep is actually a pretty small muscle. To work it you've got to let it extend fully and then curl back, extend and retract, don't swing it, but challenge it. Resistance is key.
Fortunately a chap the size Sliabh Bloom noticed what she was doing and corrected her. He's the same chap who spotted me yesterday on the bench press. Awesome dude, his upper arm is bigger than the top of my leg. Six people could have a comfortable dinner off his back.
Anyhoo, what was I waffling on about?
Oh yes, the gym. Right, if you have a membership to a gym and you go regularly, do hit the weights, not just the machines either, they have their place of course but the free weights are where it's at. No stability you see, you've got to work harder to steady yourself and maintain. Squats, curls, bench press, over arm tricep curls, do 'em all. Not at the same time, but do 'em. You'll be amazed at the difference. You'll notice all sort of shit after a few weeks, clothes getting looser, arms getting slimmer, nice shape to your shoulders, bum firmer (especially if you do squats). Do it, split your training between cardio and weights.
Why?
Because you're worth it.

Dancing Baby!

Holy shit, this little dude is rocking! Skippity hopped from Dlisted.

It's my period, my body, period.

Well huzzah, and slap my thigh for not hearing about this earlier. A new birth control pill is popping out onto the market and this one can elliminate periods. So, if a woman was to choose to use it- no more cramps, no more pain, no more discomfort, no more periods, period, for as long as she should wish to continue taking the drug.
Great, right?
Well no, there's already a hoopla abut it stateside and where there is hoopla thither, there will be hoopla hither. Observe the above clip, try to get your heards around the logic. My controlling my own body is a woman not being in control of her own body, or something, not watnting a period is an attack on family, somehow. I watched it more than once, I've painfully listened to Leslee Unruh and tried to catch the logic in her thinking, and yet all I hear is, 'You're too much of a brainwashed fool to be let make decisions for yourself, here let me and my God based faith do it for you.'
What do you think? If you could get rid of something, without harming yourself in any way shape or form, that you found tiresome and painful and dashed inconvenient, would you take it? Would you at least like the option.
Bit fat hat tip Pandagon.

Lipotrim, the latest fad.

Well now, here we go again. Atkins,-poof- The Zone-poof- The south beach- poof- and slimfast-poof. So what's next? Why the Lipotrim, say it with me now, the L-i-p-o-t-r-i-m. Doesn't it sound lovely, can't you feel the pounds melting away even by saying it?
My mother, the mistress of the quick fix, got wind of this last week through a friends of hers. Apparantly it is a diet you buy at the chemists (thus making it totally kosher, right?). You drink shakes instead of eating food and voila, the fat just melts away.
Can you imagine anything more horrific?
'What happens when you finish the diet and start eating normally again?' I asked the Lilac one, thinking of her metabolism which is already fucked up by years of taking tablets for just about everything a hypochondraic with a sympathetic/rich docter can take.
'Carmel Higgens lost over a stone in three weeks?' She said, ignoring me.
'A stone of what? Fat? Muscle? Water? Handbag?'
'A stone is a stone.' She said.
'No it isn't. Look, this sounds like just another faddy diet to me.'
'Well I'm going to give it a try.'
'Okay.'
'You know, you could at least try to sound a little more supportive.'
'I don't support it, I think it's a bad idea. I"ve told you a million times before, if you do really want to lose weight change your diet and do more exercise. I've offered to come with you to the gym, AND go for walks and you just ignore me.'
She changed the subject, thus neatly ignoring my last sentence completely.
I had a gander about the interweb to see about it and WHOAH! As I suspected, not good. And not cheap either, costing about 65 euros a weeks for the shakes. You have folk starving themselves and complaining about feeling dizzy and coming out in rashes. Then there are the folk who swear by it, but put the weight back on the moment they stopped doing it and are wracked with guilt for not being stronger and more commited to their 'saviour.'

Most diets are not good. I would even go as far as saying that diets are a crock of shit, but that's just me and it's monday so I don't feel like pulling my punches. Diets are not sustainable, changing your eating habits and exercising is very sustainable.
At the risk of repeating myself, the quick fix is attractive, but never the way to go about something.
Kim Ayres at http://losingcwt.blogspot.com/ got it right when he shed over 100 pounds in weight. He did it slowly and carefully, by eating right and changing his eating habits and recognising his relaltionship with food. I would advise anyone thinking about losing weight to give Kim's site a thorough read through, save your money, don't buy into a fad. The answer to your weight loss problems is in your own hands.
Right, now I'm off to the bank to kick up a fuss. They are quick enough to take money from us customers, but when they are supposed to be giving it back I notice they do like to drag their little banky feet.
There could be a Swink Lop involved.

Meetings.

Folk who call meetings on a friday ought to be horsewhipped, have salt rubbed into their flesh, horsewhipped again, have vinegar poured on their flayed skin, shot from a cannon into smouldering embers, blunderbussed and then be forced to listen to James Blunt for over eight hours.
However. Have a very good weekend y'all it grows every nearer to drinky-time.

Sharon Osbourne, wot a lady.

ON the subject of angry women. Alllow me to present to you Mizz Osbourne's latest mild mannered comment on the subject of childrearing and disagreements of such.
""[Kiss' Gene Simmons] said that our kids are on drugs and that his aren't messed up like that. He'll always be C-list, and his wife's snatch has been rubbed on every pole in L.A. I'll fucking tear his head off and stick it up his wife's cunt!"
Oh how I wish I could have been a fly on the wall of that woman's parent/ teacher meetings and so on.

A woman scorned.

Jesus, I read this in the Independent this morning and my first thought was Jesus, heat of the moment rage is a very very dangerous thing indeed. Oh, dontcha like the way the Indo put 'another woman' in inverted commas? Was she not a woman? Maybe she was a puppy. Or a rainbow. Anyhoo

"A JEALOUS housewife in a fit of rage ran down her husband with a car after a row over "another woman".

Mother-of-four Helen Fehily of Murphy Place, Abbeyside, Dungarvan, Co Waterford, was given a suspended two-year prison sentence at Waterford Circuit Court.

She pleaded guilty to causing serious harm to her husband Mark on August 14, 2006. She also pleaded guilty to drunken driving and dangerous driving on the same occasion.

The court heard that the couple were married for 17 years and had a turbulent relationship. They had just reunited after a separation of several months.

The incident was triggered off when the "other woman" played back a voicemail message in which the husband claimed he was "mad" about her.

The defendant left the pub in Dungarvan where the message was played on a mobile phone and drove to a nearby cove where her son was fishing with her husband. The couple engaged in fisticuffs and she grabbed the car keys and drove the vehicle at him.

While on the ground injured she drove at her husband a second time and attempted to drive the car at him a third time but her son intervened and managed to stop the car.

As a result of the collision the husband's neck was broken and a plate and two bolts had to be inserted in his neck. He also suffered a fractured elbow, cracked ribs and his left ear was detached from the side of his head. He also had extensive bruising, said Gda Jim Ahearne.

Following surgery, the husband made a good recovery. The couple had a turbulent relationship and a barring order was obtained against the husband due to violence in the home.

The husband told the court that he did not want to see his wife locked up for what she did to him."

Very decent of him.
Bit extreme, and while I find I can't support a woman running her husband and father of her kids over I do understand the fury behind it. Haven't we all done rash things in fits of rage? I"m rather hoping some of you agree with me here, I don't want to be Johnnysolopsycho on a Friday.
I'll tell you what a fatcat once did, not in rage I might add, in cool calculated anger.
Many many years ago I went out with a chap, a most unsuitable chap, so utterly wrong for me that to this day I will sometimes bang the heel of my hand against my forehead and cry, 'What were you thinking!?' in the strangest of places.
To give you some idea Try to imagine pairing plaid with horizontal stripes, only fools think they go together, fools and people with mental problems.
But I digress.
Our relationship was stormy from day one. Literally, it rained constantly it seemed. Forcing us to spend more time than is natural together, by the time we moved to Dublin together we were ready to do serious battle (how it never occurred to just split up is a whole other story).
Anyway, after one particularly nasty wet weekend he moved out, but insisted we still see each other. I saw him and then decided I wouldn't, he disagreed with this decision by kicking the front door off my lousy grotty flat. Nothing says I love you more than destroying a girl's front door. Conversely, nothing says 'I'm a big fucking eegit and I should just gas myself now and be done with it' than the girl-despite being angry about the door- finding this somewhat passionate.
'I want to bury the hatchet' he said, as the last of the hinges fell.
'I'd like to bury it too! Right between your two fucking eyes. You broke my door!'
'Look I don't want to fight with you. And I'll fix your door on the weekend.'
Such romance. Naturally he never fixed the door either.
Anyhoo, we went along like this for a few more months, fighting, making up, kicking holes in doors, I in an act of fury one day ripped up nearly all of his text books for college, leaving him no choice but to spend three whole days sticking the pages back together again. He got me back by getting me fired from my weekend job by coming in drunk and glaring at all the patrons and offering to fight the manager when he was asked to leave.
Oh wot larks.
Nightmare.
Anyway, the heel of the hunt arrived when I caught him out with some dollybird one night. Don't ask me how I knew what the stupid shite was up to, it's not like he didn't leave enough hints.
He might as well have said, 'Say fat cat I"m going for a drink with some....MALE friends that you DON"T know tonight.'
'Why are you making inverted comma signs with your finger like that?' I might have replied had I not been busy scraping mould from the fridge.
But my antenna was up and half an hour after he left I followed. Because he is/ was a total idiot, it never even occurred to him to go to a totally different pub from the one we might frequent on occasion. I walked in saw them together, made sure he saw me and then turned heel and left. He ran after me.
'It's not what you think!' He roared.
'Sure it is.'
'You're acting like a stupid bitch.' He grabbed my arm.
I hit him.
He hit me back.
I was stunned. And then I was furious. With a blood curling scream I went for him and we wasted a few more minutes looking like stupid fucking eegits on a busy road in Rathmines until finally a passing squad ordered us to cease and desist immediately.
'What the fuck's is got to do with you.' My idiot soon to be very ex-boyfriend yelled at the two cops.
Moment later he found out just what it had to do with them and by the time he got the blood to circulate in his arm again I had gone home and barricaded myself in my flat using the fridge to keep the broken door closed.
Oh but I was velly angry, filled with a cold fury that wouldn't' calm. I didn't sleep, I ignored phone calls,(nothing really new there) I plotted and I schemed. What could I do to right this wrong? to save this face? to gain the upper hand.
What would make him suffer as I was now suffering.
I pondered all these thing and nothing came to mind. I ghost walked for a few days, attending my useless bar job and dragging my tired body to the laundrette and back again. But still I raged.
And then, one day, I was passing the swimming pool in Rathmines when I saw it. My opportunity. There it was, gleaming, in a shaft of light.
His one prize possession. The only thing he owned worth any money.
His racing bike.
And lo, the idea came to me.
I fished my flat keys from my pocket and stared. Yes! I still had it, the second spare key to the lock that was currently holding said bike to the railings of the pool.
I glanced around once and then unlocked the bike. I took it down and walked away quickly. It was a proper professional racing bike, one his parents had bought him for competitions, light and fast.
I took it immediately to Ranelagh, where upon I sold it to a man called Chester for quite a decent sum of money. Money which I used to buy very nice Levi Jeans with.
I felt my heart begin to heal.
When we got back together a fortnight or so later (I told you we were idiots) He lamented the loss of this great bike and swore that he would wreak vengeance on the thief when he found them. I lit another cigarette and nodded sagely, admiring the seam on my new jeans.

Politics and cats.

Well it's here. Polling day, a day when Ireland takes to the polls and votes. No more baby kissing, mobile phone oooohing, hand shaking, shoulder slapping, finger pointing, troop rallying, door step hogging, paper cuts, cardboard photos, television debates, Irish speaking, pontificating, newspaper barebacking, waffling, slithering, sliding, disguising, lawn mowing, bemoaning, twitchy-eyed, ginger mingeringly, money shrugging, photo shopped, lying, cheating, accusing, overly tan, overly pale, overly toothy, overly hairy, overly rigid, overly beardy, overly Harney flapdoodle bosh!
It's all hands on deck, for this is a tightly contested election and our futures depend on it. Soon I will avail of my shower, put on some lip gloss and take my self off to the local school and cast my vote.
Here's hoping I've made the right call.

Oh, the following video is for poor old Andraste. They may do stuff to annoy the shit out of us, but at least they do stuff like this too.

An argument.

I've a lot of shit to do today work wise. So bearing this in mind I got up rather early and took my complaining arse off to the gym for a run. It was ghastly and despite my best puce-faced effort I still have not mastered 10K in under one hour, close but no cigar.
No matter, gasping and heaving, I weaved back to the near empty changing rooms and had a long shower-lathering my hair not once but twice, bliss.
Upon heading back to my locker I heard what I thought to be raised voices. Strange, thought I, but I proceeded and when I finally reached my destination I could clearly hear a very vocal full blown argument coming from the row of lockers directly behind mine.
'I'm telling you, you always take her side. It's so ridiculous.'
'I'm not taking her side, but she didn't do anything wrong.'
'HE WAS MARRIED!!'
'They'd split up.'
'They were still married.'
'Oh please, they were separated.'
'So!, They could have waited. Would you like someone to do that to you?'
'No, but he wanted kids and she didn't. She LIED to him.'
'She said she did.'
'Well! If she said she did why didn't she have them.'
'Maybe she didn't realise she was on a fucking timer.'
'Or HELLO, maybe she just didn't want them.'
Yeah right, but that other bitch suddenly pops one out, even after she said all along she didn't want kids either.'
'PEOPLE CAN CHANGE THEIR MINDS YOU KNOW!'

And so on, I dried my toes and dressed as the battle raged, fascinated by what I was hearing. What lives other people live, so passionate, so soap opera-esque.
I slipped on my t-shirt and took my lock off the door. The argument was reaching it's apogee. The voices were shrill and cracking the language more verbose, until finally one of them yelled.
'LOOK Brad and Angie have fucking moved on right, maybe you should just let it go.'
'I HAVE let it go!' The other one replied, in a ohnoihaven't tone.' But I still think they're fucking scumbags!'
I slammed my locker door and reversed. I looked around the corner at two startled women, in their early twenties, still half in and half out of their street clothes.
'You're very loud.' I said. They glared at me. I hoisted my bag up onto my shoulder and walked towards the door.
I had just reached it when I heard.
'Who the FUCK does she think she is?'

Who indeed.

Judgement Day came early.

Jesus, while I pondered my work and digested my lunch-beans on toast- I came across this story. Seems some folk really do hold others to a VELLY high standard and woe betide them if they fall short.

'Police in India have arrested a man who allegedly killed and then beheaded at least seven people who had displeased him, a news report said today.

Chandra Kant Jha was arrested in New Delhi on Sunday, two days after the last of four headless bodies was found dumped outside the high-security Tihar Jail, the Times of India newspaper reported.

The first headless corpse was found outside Tihar Jail in November 2003, the report said.

Police also claimed to have evidence linking Jha to three other killings in which the victims were beheaded, it said.
“It’s just a coincidence that Jha was caught so early after the fourth body was discovered near the Tihar Jail. We were already close on his heels,” the newspaper quoted police Commissioner KK Paul as saying.

Senior police officer Rajesh Kumar said Jha tied the arms and legs of his victims before strangling them, then chopped off their heads and limbs before stuffing the bodies in plastic bags to dispose of them, the newspaper reported.

It said Jha allegedly killed one man because he wouldn’t stop eating meat even after Jha asked him to, another for allegedly having an affair with a friend’s daughter, and two others because they were womanisers who drank too much.

The first victim thrown outside the jail was a friend who had lied to Jha, the newspaper cited police officials as saying.

Is she taking the piss?

Sorry for the vulgar post title, but really, they're the first words that came into my head when I read the following, from the Independent...
"MARY Harney yesterday said she "dearly wanted" to return to the Department of Health if the Government parties win the election.

She strongly denied she had been a failure as health minister and claimed her success in improving A&E waiting times was proof of progress. However, she did admit that there were still problems.

Ms Harney spoke after Bertie Ahern came under fire from Fine Gael and Labour over the Taoiseach's statement that health was just a "peripheral" issue in the election campaign.

Ms Harney said there had been recent 40-60pc improvements at A&Es, acknowledged by the Irish Nurses Organisation, and she wanted to reduce other waiting times.

These include the target of a 12-hour wait for hospital admission (set 18 months ago) to no-one having to wait more than six hours to get a bed.

Ms Harney claimed the sight of the sick having to wait overnight for admission had virtually disappeared. There were continuing difficulties "but there have been fantastic improvements in a relatively short period of time".

She added: "There are problems, particularly in the cities, but the out-of-hours service we are establishing will have a much greater impact on A&Es in the future. Ninety-five per cent of those who use A&E do not experience a night on a trolley. The experience of 90pc is good, with 93pc in surveys saying they would go back to the same hospital or recommend it to someone else."

The minister again warned that she was going ahead with the recruitment of 1,500 extra consultants.

On the industrial action begun by hospital consultants yesterday, she said she felt it would be difficult for the public to understand, particularly since the consultants themselves had sought extra appointments in speciality areas.

On her chosen portfolio, she said: "In September 2004, I asked for the job in Health, because I passionately believe we can change health for the better for patients and that all people should be treated on the basis of medical need in our public hospitals.

"There are big challenges in this job. And I consider it a privilege to have the chance to meet those challenges for better health-care for patients. I would be honoured with the chance to finish the job."

The HSE is a shambolic nightmare, patients are being mis-diagnosed, or disreagarded all together because it's the weekened, the nurses are on strike and I for one wouldn't like to be stting in an A&E anywhere in this god forsaken country, if you do need medical help beyond the norm you've got to pay through the nose and go private -like I did when I needed a mole removed- or else wait for up to a year in some cases to be looked at...Oh yes Mary, I'll bet you would be honoured with the chance to finish the job, but frankly I rather hand the position over to six toed tree sloth at this stage.

Tori Amos.

Okay, I give up, I tried, I tried some more, I listened to some people say I should try again but then I had to just say 'HOLD UP YO! FUK DAT SHEET.'
No more. I give in. I freely admit it. I just don't get Tori Amos. To me everyone of her songs sounds just like the one that went before it, tuneless warbling with piano. And frankly she makes my brow furrow. And I don't want any more wrinkles. So no, no to Tori. And also no to people who think she's the next musical christ or something.
No I say.
I'm going for a swim now.

Cancer.

From to day's independent.

"THE controversy over botched breast cancer tests blew up again last night after it was revealed a second woman was given the all-clear only to be diagnosed with the disease just weeks later.

The 38-year-old Limerick mother-of-two had even organised a party to celebrate the news of her medical clearance.

But just hours before the party was due to take place, she received the devastating news that she had breast cancer.

The woman is now facing a mastectomy and is said to be deeply upset at the manner in which she discovered she had cancer last Easter.

Her case follows that of Tipperary woman Rebecca O'Malley (41) who was also the victim of a botched breast sample test, as revealed in the Irish Independent last week.

The revelations greatly increased pressure last night on Health Minister Mary Harney to sanction a full, independent review of cancer testing within Health Service Executive facilities.

The Limerick woman's breast cancer tests were carried out earlier this year, though not at the Cork University Hospital lab that is now the focus of an HSE probe. It is understood her biopsy samples were processed by a UK laboratory.

The woman was initially told her biopsy showed no indication of cancerous cells - only to be informed four weeks later that she did, in fact, have breast cancer.

The Royal College of Physicians pathology faculty has urged the immediate adoption of a 'triple test' system for all breast-cancer samples.

An HSE spokesperson said the latest case would be followed up urgently once details were known."

Those poor women. The HSE are really dropping clangers all over the place but this is an absolute outrage. Cancer is a fucker. An absolute fucker of a disease and for a woman breast cancer in particular scares the hell out of us. It needs to be caught early, addressed and treated immediately if we're to have any chance of beating it at all. That's why these botched results are so outrageous. Four weeks can be the difference between life and death, or between mutilation or treatment.
I feel very sorry for the two ladies in question, what they must feel is beyond me. Rage probably. Here we are, a prosperous fucking country and we can't even get something as important as breast cancer screening right.
Who is culpable here? Where does the buck finally stop? The HSE must have someone who is answerable to us, Joe Public. It's not good enough to ride this one until the storm breaks. As women we need to know that we can rely on our health service when it come to matter that might mean us living or dying. Breast cancer is not a fucking cuddly pink ribboned disease that just gets treated easily. It is an ugly vicious serious illness that ultimately can kill a woman if left undiagnosed and untreated. I've seen first hand what cancer can do to a person, I'm sure many of us have, and I for one don't want to take the risk that it might happen to me some day simply through the incompetency of the HSE.

A Finny Friday Foto!

Oooo I've been saving this one all week long, itching to post but too filled with titteryheehee to blow it all on a Tuesday. Oh when it was sent to me I gasped and then I thought 'well fair fucks to 'er.' And then 'Bleeee'
I also dedicate this particular friday foto to Sam cause it's 'er birfday innit?

Run Cat Run.

Well, wish me luck.
I'm loaded full of carbs-digest damn you- and filled with trepidation, novel.
Today is the day for my long run and I am aiming for 20K, which is close to half a marathon. I ran 16k on last week's long run so I see no real reason why I can't hit it. Well no real reason apart from sheer exhaustion and leg wobblies.
It should be doable though, I ran 10k on Tuesday and finished with a tail wag and I have rested the gams since.
I have eaten correctly and am filled with an oatsy goodness that should see me through, also some wholemeal toat with lashings of butter, yes, very good for the running.
It is so.
The iPod is locked and loaded with running tunes, tunes carefully chosen for their kickassity.
Naturally I will start badly and feel cross, but by the 4k mark I will have eased into it and won't be feeling nearly as fallumped. After that it's just another 16 K.
You can do this Melvin.
One hour to go before I step onto my treadmil and press 'QUICK START'
Eeek.

Sarah Jessica Parker.

A quick question. Sarah Jessica Parker, good looking woman, striking, attractive, or looks like shoe? Be honest, I have ten Euro riding on the outcome.

Why that's just spiffy, Biffy.

From UTV Headlines.

"One of Ireland's top politicians has come under fire after admitting smoking marijuana as a student.


Critics complained Finance Minister Brian Cowen appeared to make light of his drug experience joking that, unlike Bill Clinton, he did inhale.

Mr Cowen made the gaffe in an interview with rock magazine Hot Press just days before the general election on May 24
The politician hotly tipped as Taoiseach Bertie Ahern`s eventual successor revealed he smoked the drug while studying law at University College Dublin (UCD).

"Anyone who went to the UCD bar in the `70s that didn`t get a whiff of marijuana would be telling you a lie," Mr Cowen said.

"There were a couple of occasions when it was passed around and unlike President Clinton, I did inhale."

His remarks were today criticised by a mental health expert who said Mr Cowen should have been more prudent in his comments given the dangers associated with use of the drug.

"For the vulnerable and the weak and those who are easily led, the danger is that people looking at a successful man like Mr Cowen might assume cannabis is an innocent pastime," said Des Kavanagh, General Secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association.

"It is a gateway to other more serious drugs. He should have been more prudent."

Former US President Bill Clinton famously admitted smoking marijuana, but denied he inhaled it."

Oh yawn, government dude had youthful high jinks same as every other person. But instead of lying about it he admitted it, no wonder people are confused.

Food.

Hungover like a goat and very very hungry I shall bring you a review of sorts, and then I'm going off to eat my own body weight in buttery toast.
Yesterday was my good friend's birthday and, as these things are wont to do, lunch was an extended food and drinkathon. Certainly I know that I started off with good intentions, but good intentions are like rubix cubes, I can't make heads nor tails of them and eventually I just give up and toss them down the back of the sofa.
Anywoo, The Lobster Pot, a small well known restaurant in Ballsbridge, is a cracking good place to have lunch. Pricey, but very good. The food is so fresh it's practically wiggling and smirking at you on the trolley they bring around to show you whats on offer.
I had scallops and Dublin Bay prawns, pan seared in garlic and lemon to start, my friend has the Lobster Pot CHowder and it was bloomin' excellent and packed full of fishy/seafood godness. We split a plate of chicken liver pate between us, not great it has to be said, but then we are completely enthralled to the liver pate in Fallon and Byrnes on Exchequer Street. Go there if you like pate so light and mousy and nutty and...mmmm, it's really very good.
For our mains I had grilled monkfish, she had steak tartare. My monkfish was rich and plentiful if a little over soaked in garlic. Her tartare was sublime.
We had a delicious fruity meringue/cheesecake thingiemebob fro dessert and a Baileys each.
During the course of our meal some wine was drank. After our meal some cocktails were drank, before our meal a martini was consumed.
Naturally that resulted in my coming home, waffling like a rabid loon at the paramour, 'very garlicky' I'm said to have said more than once before going for a four hour lie down-which resulted in my waking up at half nine thinking it was half nine today, and then being very confused to discover it wasn't.
Fortunately watching Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines scuppered my awakeness and but for a hankering for beans on toast, all was well with the world and I drifted back to an unencumbered coma at about two this morning.
Huzzah! A good birthday all round then, and she loved the rather Jewellery box.
The Lobster Pot, rather good choice for those special occassions. I recommend it.

Choc-horror.

From today's indendent.

"A LORRY-load of Cadbury chocolate bars worth around £140,000 (€212,000) has been stolen by thieves.

The trailer full of Cadbury chocolate Flake bars was towed away from outside a dairy in West Lancashire in England.

Police believe a white Scania tractor unit was used to take the container of flakes from outside Fredericks Dairies on Siding Lane, near Kirby."

This should be easy to solve, just wait a few weeks and watch for known gangsters piling on the pounds. Also they are probabaly women.
Did I ever mention I'm not a big chocolate fan. This fact alone is almost enough to have me permanently barred from the 'we are women' club.

Right, I'm heading into town for a birthday lunch, don't wait up. Well, Sam, you can wait up, you can type and handle your hooch, I am in awe.

Jerry Falwell

Jerry "Aids is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals," Falwell has died aged 73. The televangelist was found slumped in his office and pronounced dead sometime after. I hope the good reverend gets to meet his maker. I also hope he brought marshmallows.

It's not this one Finn.

Oh no, it's weally weally not, you'll 'ave to wait 'til Firday.

Housework, tidy home tidy mind, barf.

I had an interesting chat with a friend of mine last week over some poor lunch and the conversation has stayed with me somewhere in the fog of my insomnia raddled brain. However a second conversation with a totally different person this morning has pushed it straight back to my frontal lobe and irked me the way mohair can.
Housework. Necessary evil or badge of honor?
Okay, for me, I'll freely admit, it's a necessary evil. I do it because I don't want to live in a total pig sty. I do just enough to prevent this from happening. I hoover once a week, I wash the kitchen and bathroom floor once a week, sometimes surfaces will be polished and now and then a window might get the same treatment. Twice a year the books get dusted. I recycle daily.
Both the ladies I spoke with seemed to view this as not a whole lot. Then they both looked proud of the amount of shit they do in their house. Like it was a oneupmanship thing.
'Ohh my floors are always filthy no matter how many times I wash them.' On gal said, rather happily it seemed for someone with such a problem.
'How many times do you wash them?'
'Oh every day, I have too. They get so filthy.'
I snarfed, ordered another glass of wine and changed the conversation. But it stuck with me, how smug they were about their housework, how eeeeeeever so slightly patronizing they were when I didn't subscribe to their views that a twinkling sparkling home is a happy one.
I hate hoovering, I hate the sound of the hoover and after a while it grates on my nerves so badly that I feel like flinging the Hoover out the window.( I did this once, in a rage I tossed an old hoover half way down the street) However, have cats, will hoover. But once a week is plenty.
And clothes. I don't iron. Period.
I mentioned this to the girl I had lunch with last week and if I had said, 'Say darling, I"m considering slaughtering nine male newborns on June bank holiday weekend to appease the Godess of Shoes, wanna come?' her reaction could not have been more OTT.
'You don't iron?' My gal pal said, spluttering her Britvic 55.
'Nope.'
'Ever?'
'Nope.'
She cast a quick glance over me. Was I any more crumpled than she? Also Nope.
'But how do you get your clothes so unwrinkled?'
'I fold or hang them properly when I take them off the line.'
'Have you ever ironed?'
'I may have ironed the sleeves of a shit a few years ago.' I said, pushing a piece of limp salad about, 'but to perfectly honest I"m not even sure I know where the iron is in our house. I think it's under the sink.'
She shook her head. 'I can't believe you don't iron.'
'Why?'
'I iron everything, duvets, underwear, everything.'
'Why?"
She shrugged, 'I don't know I just do.'
'Okay, I don't.'
She laughed then and shook her head,'You were never one for the housework.'
'I do housework, I just don't iron.'
'What about the paramour?"
'What about him?'
'Does he never need anything ironed?'
'Sure, he does it himself.'
This too caused a head shake. Apparently the idea that a grown man might iron his own fucking shirts is still something of a novel idea in 2007.
All this head shaking and unspoken disapproval bring me neatly to this morning and another of my mother's impromptu visits. Before second coffee I might add.

Another thing I don't do is clean the house before I start work. Because I work from home folk seem to think I"m just sitting around here watching day time tv eating Malteasers or some shit. Well I'm not. I'm at work. I may not have physically left the house but I'm at work nonetheless. That means I'm not doing house work or taking personal calls or making coffee for my mother who just happens to be in the neighbourhood and is looking for a few minutes entertainment.
My attitude is thus, I don't give a shit if the house is falling down about my ears, I'm not doing anything about it until I"m finished whatever I happen to be working on right at that moment. This too is something of a shock to other folk.
'How can you work knowing there are dishes in the sink.' My mother might say, peering disapprovingly at the breakfast things.
'Uhundddo' I will reply, waiting for her to leave.
'Doesn't it bother you?'
'No, I can't hear them from the other room.'
'I wouldn't be able to leave them like that.'
'You can wash them up if you like.'
This is something of a challenge. Naturally she won't wash them, but my refusal to get bothered by two cups, a bowl and a side plate sitting minding their own business in a sink will trouble her all day and she will tell one of my sisters about it later on. She will have no choice, if she doesn't she will die of poisoning or a brain freeze or something.
It took me a long time to self motivate myself to work from home and not spend all day reading or staring out the window. It appears it might take longer to get 'ME AT DESK, ME WORKING NOW' into the heads of others.
Housework and people who think it is the be all and fucking end all. People who iron socks for Christ's sakes! I"m against it!

A musical Monday with Ray LaMontagne.

Through no choice and no fault of my own I was slowly saturated with the music of Ray LaMontagne, I could not escape him, the Paramour insisted on playing him while he cooked, I would hear him sing his soul laden tunes in the shower, it was relentless. Then one day, as I was returning from a shoe shopping trip or other, I found myself singing Jolene in the car, and then I realised it. I was a god damned Ray LaMontagne convert.
So, bearing that in mind, here, you lot listen, see if you don't end up humming his bloody music when you least expect it.
He's got a new album out too, Till the Sun Turns Black. You should buy it.

Pitting a baby against a snake is fucked up,

even if the poor animal's mouth is sewed shut. Seriously, once again I would ask what the hell is wrong with people.

The Painted Veil

Okay, quick post. Go see this. This film is an adaptation of a Somerset Maugham book.
If you like grown up, slow moving, 'plays'* about adult relationships based on raw and sometimes bitter emotion go see this. It is absolutely beautiful. Set in a very verdant China 1924, is is the story of a marriage, a faux marriage, a marriage of convenience that bloosoms into love despite the trial and tribulations it suffers, it is also a film of surrender and coming of age, of growing up, growing into love and growing as a person.
I loved it, the paramour went along as he is my great love and feels it is his duty to suffer through stuff I know in my heart he'd rather not, but I love him for making the effort.
Tobey Jones is absolutely excellent, Naomi Watts-somewhat surprisingly- won my sympathy and I have always held Edward Norton (I forgive the accent) deep in my heart since he said, ' Put your fuckin' mouth on the curb ' in American History X.



* I say 'play' because the action is slightly stilted and one on one with a lot of unspoken but deeply felt emotion. More like watchng a play than a film, not The Devil's Handmaiden-escue, but play like nonetheless.

Good evening, I bought the jewellery box and now the paramour and I are off to cook a rack of wild boar, scrummy!

Drink driving and the limit.

This story is from to day's independent.

"SINN Fein TD Martin Ferris has been found to be under the legal limit for drink-driving.

Mr Ferris - who took to the election campaign trail yesterday in his Renault car - said in a statement issued early yesterday that the results of samples taken from him three weeks ago were negative.

Gardai in Tralee said that Mr Ferris's reading was not negative and that there was alcohol in his system, but they confirmed he was not over the legal limit.

Mr Ferris was stopped in the early hours after leaving a pub near his home in Ardfert to drive the short distance home on April 22. After failing two breath tests, he was arrested and taken to Tralee Garda Station, where he gave a urine sample.

He later admitted on radio to having drunk two pints and a glass of wine earlier that night, but said he felt confident he was not over the legal limit. The TD, who is seeking re-election, also said he would owe the people of his North Kerry constituency a huge apology should he be over the legal limit.

He said yesterday that if he found himself in that position again, he would not get behind the wheel of his car.

"Obviously I have been very worried over the past-two-and a half weeks, I have been very worried. I am very relieved that the result came back negative," he told Newstalk radio station. "I believed it at the time and I said it publicly at the time that I wasn't over the limit. I believe my position at that time has now been vindicated."

I'm not sure his position is 'vindicated', I think he had what I might describe as a lucky escape.
Now as far as I can make out he drank 5 units of alcohol and yet he was barely half the legal limit. But it seems to me the drank rather a lot. Am I wrong? What is the limit? I scampered off to check out what the Road safety dudes had to say on the matter.
"An average of 250 drivers are arrested each week for driving while under the influence of an intoxicant in the Republic of Ireland

According to the Medical Bureau of Road Safety 90% of blood and urine specimens and 81% of breath specimens analysed in 2002 were above the alcohol limit for driving. Of the blood, urine and breath tests certified in 2002 the Medical Bureau of Road Safety found that;

The mean alcohol level in blood was 174 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres (The legal limit being 80 mg/100ml)
The mean alcohol level in urine was 216 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres (the legal limit being 107 mg/100ml)
The mean alcohol level in breath was 57 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres (the legal limit being 35 ug/100ml)
International research indicates that alcohol is a contributory factor in up to 40% of road collisions and in Ireland, it is conservatively estimated that alcohol is the primary cause of 25% of all road collisions and 33% of collisions resulting in fatalities."
Right, but in terms of drinking what does this all mean? How are we, Joe Public, to guage those readings? Is one drink okay? Two? Three?
There must be some sort of scale at work. It is entirely possible that a six foot man has two pints and feels no real effects but his wife, five foot nowt drinks the same and feels tipsy, many factors must be taken into account, length of time since last drink, how much food was consumed, is the drinker on any medication, and so forth.
It is not an exact science.
But you can be very sure that there are men and women all over the country reading the news of Martin Ferris today and thinking, 'okay, so two pints and a glass of wine is fine and dandy. Maybe three pints since he was only at the half way mark.' But it isn't fine, really, what might be fine on one day might be very NOT fine on another.
I don't have the moral high ground here, I often drive home from the paramour's father's home on a sunday having had a glass of wine of two with our Sunday roast. Has my driving been impaired? I don't think so, but what if it was? What if the second or two of reaction time was dulled. Would I be able to live with myself if something happened?
Dunno. But I need to examine my own actions. Maybe I need to say, right, I'm driving a large automobile that will crush the delicate bones of anything that crosses its path so I"d best be giving driving my utmost attention.
And for the sake of all drivers and pedestrians out there I hope nobody reads the Ferris case as an excuse to up the level that they risk drinking.

Input ple-ase.

Yawn, and good late morning fellow Friday lovers. I'm only on coffee numbero uno so bear with me.
Next Wednesday is the birthday of a VELLY good friend of mine and I have booked up in for a most excellent seafood lunch in a fine restaurant. However, I must buy a gift of some kind tomorrow. Now ordinarily this would be easy peasy, most of my chumlywarners are easy to buy for, but this lady is the exception.
She will be 44, she is wealthy, does not like sport, nor doing stuff, 'cept eating and going to the cinema and drinking, she likes fur, gold and quirky items. Now since I won't be venturing anywhere into furland and gold is also out that leaves the quirky.
So, so far I've come up with,
1) Large ornate jewellery box.
2) leopard print gloves and matching handbag-more for winter really, but they are a bit fab.
3) and that is it.

Any advice/ideas would be most appreciated.

Gardening.

I am bloody sick of gardening, everytime I go out there and do stuff more stuff needs to be done. It' s never bloody ending. I cut back all the hedges two weeks ago and they've grown bloody back! The lawn needs to be cut again and the beds I filled with shrubs and annuals are choc full of dandilions and daisies that appear to be thriving despite my digging them up every other day. Urgh, and I won't go into the smiders and slugs and snails and weird wood lousey things that look like armadillos. Blee max 5.
And then there's the weather, rain and wind and sun and no sun every two to five minutes is not exactly ideal, jacket on/jacket off. Cross making. Plus when I lifted up one of the 20L bags of top soil it had split rather mysteriously during the night and it went everywhere.
After a brief furious crying jag -where stuff got kicked across the 'lawn' HAH!- I have retired in here to sulk.
In fact fuck sulking, I'm going to the gym. The garden can go to hell too.
Gardening, sometimes I"m against it!

The secret.

'Oh give me all your money honey, give it all to meeeeeeeeeee
You do'n need it no more, not now you got meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
We''ll blow this joint and live wild 'n freeeeeeeee'
Trust me baybee, I'm all that you neeeeeeeeeeeed!"

Well slap my ass and call my lady patch Babs, just when I thought the world of stupidity could not get any more richly packed I find that not only can it, it has.
If mumbo jumbo was a pond, then The Secret is the crud currently floating like an ooze on the top. The Secret is just that, the secret to universal happiness, how to get everything your heart ever desired.
How my chumlywarners? How can we achieve this Nirvana like state, why by asking the universe for it. Squeeze yer many eyes shut and ask away. Visualise it. Wanna new car ? Bigger mickey? Lose weight? Less ear wax? Don't do anything, don't work for it, working is for losers. No No, you just gotta wish really really hard and ask the 'right' questions of the Uber God Answerer (UGA) and the 'Law of attraction' will provide you very heartfelt wishes.
Awesome! Right? Right? And even more funninger and trickyser is that if you ask for things wronglier, the you get the opposite of the shit you asked for, so you better buy the book/video/assorted paraphernalia and learn how to catch the UGAs not very benevolent ear, last thing you want is to be fatter with a gammy leg living in cave with a shrivelled mickey. NU-UH! No SIREEEEEEEBOB!
OH the crapology. Won't someone please think of the mickeys!
I've snickered at The Secret briefly before and ignored it with gusto. Fuck it, I've said aloud, if fools want to part with their hard earned cash in the vain hope that some not fool shyster might know more about their future happiness and contentment than they do, well let them on. Who am I to mock ridicule and damn well POINT AND LAUGH! At least it's not Reiki.
About as good as, but there you go, some people are just dumb.
And I was CONTENT to let this latest chicanery slide right by me, safe in the knowledge that there will always be people who are taken in by fraudsters who conflate mumbo jumbo with scientific sounding stuff in order to validate their ludicrous claims, ain't that how snake oil is sold in the first place? Oh sure, the 'Law of attraction' why I says dat be just loike de law o' gravity, therefore it must be a scientific fact? Right Hoss?
Oh never mind, as I say it was sliding right by me, Oprah never struck me a much of an authority on 'must read books' any way and after the James Frey debacle I thinks she should stick to taking over the world one bored house wife/Jennifer Anniston fan at a time.
But I digress.
I WAS prepared to over look this latest pile of STEAMING BULLSHIT, right up until I took a call this morning. Observe fellow mother sufferers.

'Doodle deep doodle deep doodle deep.' (most hated sound, our phone)
'Harro?" 'Me- still with toothbrush in side of mouth.
'Hello.' Mother, just a hint of antagonism. A distant peel of hostility.
'Horr on.' Drop phone, wander back to bathroom, rinse and spit, wash face carefully, pat face dry, examine toes, consider world politics, take deep breath, straighten shoulder, wander back to the bedroom, take up phone.
'Hello.'
We engage in some mindless drivel about houses, Etheline, the weather, whether or not Angeline Ball still sings and what not. All perfectly innocent, but I am not fooled, she's sitting on something the way a kestrel sits on wire over looking a warren, she's waiting for a slip up, a casual moment where she can dive in screeching and flapping, talons to the ready.
I know, I am the rabbit.
'Bobby Ewing is looking so much better these days.' She says after a lull. Bobby, my mother's overweight bug eyed spaniel. He has cancer, she's been treating this by taking him to a faith hearler- and lately, a vet.
'That's very good news. '
My rabbit nose twitches. My wabbity senses are all a flutter. Hide hide.
It just goes to show, if you have faith' -the word slips out, the kestrel is dropping carrots outside my burrow- 'you can achieve anything'
We wait. I stay deep in the safe warminess of the burrow, not today wabbit botherer.
But what's this? A scraping sound? And a skritch skritch for above? Can kestrels fucking dig? I don't remember that from animal planet?
'I've been hearing all about this new book-
The skritch skritch is growing louder, hide hide, dammit, why can't I turn around! I knew I shouldn't have picked a rabbit, what the fuck made me do that? Why didn't I turn myself into a ferret? Or a wolverine? Sheet, even a badger would do it.
'- it's called The Secret. Have you heard of it?'
Trapped.
'I have.'
'It's supposed to tremendous.'
'I haven't heard that much about it.' I lie.
'Oh,' MY mother says disbelievingly. 'I'm surprised to hear that. Normally you're very up to it on books.'
Up to it?
'No, I mean I've heard it mentioned somewhere, but like I say I don't know much about it at all.'
My mother digests this one. I go back to breathing and possibly chewing on on of the carrots.
'Well-'
We waffle on for another few minutes and say our goodbyes, all cordial and polite, stiff and a little formal.
The moment she hangs up I gallop down stairs and spend/waste precious moments of my life checking out what I know to be the next few months of my life. I need to know mine enemy. And oh how velly vexed I am. This shit is legion, it's so ridiculous I can see Matter Fatcat wallowing in it and regurgitating the waffle almost whole. I am in for it, there is mumbo jumbo here that even the sanest person will have trouble hacking through.
I am fatmammycat's noxious spleen.

Abortion Miss D update.

"The girl at the centre of the 'Miss D' case has won her High Court battle to be allowed to travel to Britain to have an abortion.

The judge in the case said this afternoon he holds the view firmly and unequivocally that there is "no statutory or constitutional impediment" which would prevent her from going to the UK.

The 17-year-old girl is 18 weeks pregnant with a baby which has a fatal brain disorder and won't live for more than a few days following birth."

Well well well, I'm glad to see some sense prevailed at last.

Patrick Moore, come in, your number's up, dude.

God save us all from old gasbags. The following is from the BBC-which I really must stop reading as every day it causes me some form of outrage or other.

"British TV standards are deteriorating because the BBC is "run by women", astronomer Sir Patrick Moore has said.
The Sky at Night host also described female newsreaders as "jokey" and called for separate channels to cater for the needs of the different sexes.

"I think it may eventually happen," the 84-year-old told the Radio Times.
The presenter said: "The trouble is the BBC now is run by women and it shows soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays. You wouldn't have had that in the golden days."
'I would like to see two independent wavelengths - one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men."

He claimed that interesting programmes were screened too late at night, and said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than appear on Celebrity Big Brother. And asked about his favourite series, Sir Patrick said he no longer enjoyed certain programmes because of their modern storylines.
"I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC - making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching."

Sir Patrick appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-serving TV presenter, having appeared on his show about astronomy since 1957.

A BBC spokesman described Sir Patrick as being one of TV's best-loved figures and said his "forthright" views were "what we all love about him".

Erm his forthright views? Are they 'aving a laff? Women are ruining TV? Female Commanders are 'PC'? He might be old n stuff, but that doesn't stop or preclude him from sounding like a complete arsehole.

Is that a budgie in your pocket or are you just all a flutter?

From News.ie

"A live budgie has reportedly been recovered by prison officers during a massive search for smuggled goods in maximum-security Portlaoise Prison.

Reports this morning say inmates were locked up in their cells yesterday while a huge sweep was carried out in two particular areas of the jail.

The search targeted the landing that houses gangland figures from Dublin and Limerick, as well as dissident republicans.

Eight mobile phones were found, as were three SIM cards, 150 tablets (including ecstasy), a quantity of powdered drugs, a large amount of home-made alcohol and 30 syringes.

This morning's reports say the budgie is believed to have been smuggled into the prison by a female visitor who concealed the bird internally in her body."

Okay, drugs I get, even phones and sim cards, although I'd imagine it might hurt a little. But how in the name of Shewallah did a woman smuggle a LIVE budgie internally? Do I want to know? Erm, yes, yes and no, but yes.

Life is cheap.

From the BBC.

"A South African court has convicted a woman of hiring a gang to kill the six-month-old daughter of her lover.
Dina Rodrigues paid four men, all of whom were also convicted of murder and robbery, a total of $1,500 to murder Jordan-Leigh Norton in 2005.

The baby was stabbed in the neck and her body was found in a drain in the capital, Pretoria.

It is the first case of its kind in South Africa where an estimated 1,000 children are killed every year.

There was applause in court when Judge Basheer Waglay read out the guilty verdicts in a court in Cape Town.

Ms Rodrigues' lawyer had argued that it had been an attempted kidnapping gone wrong.

"We are glad for the decision," the baby's grandfather Vernon Norton told the Sapa news agency.

He added that the family hoped Ms Rodrigues would get life in prison in June when sentencing is due."

Some days I should just not read the papers. What the fuck is wrong with people?

Abortion update.

After two days in court the HSC has performed a U-turn.

From to days Independent

"HEALTH chiefs yesterday performed a dramatic u-turn, revealing that they would not stand in the way of a teenage girl who wants to go to England for an abortion.

Even though they moved quickly to stop the 17-year-old last month, lawyers told the High Court they were now prepared to let her travel under certain conditions.

No indication was given if and when the teenager, known only as Miss D, will apply to leave.

In the strongest signal yet that the D case could be resolved without a repeat of the public tumult that followed in the wake of the X case abortion saga, lawyers for the Health Services Executive agreed it would be in the best interests of the girl to travel to England if she received district court approval to do so.

Miss D, the 17-year old whose baby is suffering from the fatal brain condition anencephaly, was not present in court for day two of the High Court action as she is unwell.

In her absence, the HSE said it would be willing to make an application to the district court to allow Miss D to travel.

It said it would agree that travel for the purpose of a termination would be in her best interests if a district court judge was satisfied the girl had considered her decision carefully, preferably after counselling."

Okay, so they decided to be humane, next question is why are we still exporting our problems to the UK?

Paris Hilton.

Oh now Missy, how you do go on. Celebrity brat and all round air head Paris Hilton has been sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating her driving probation. MIzz HIlton's pleas of 'it was all a mistake' fell on deaf judgy type ears and he seemed less than impressed when he learned that although Ms Hilton maintained she was not aware her licence had been suspended, court papers said the document she signed in January was found in her car's glove compartment.

She was also accused of failing to enrol in an alcohol education programme by a court-ordered deadline.

Of course she didn't, she felt she was above the law.
Well hard luck princess. Guess you were wrong.
Her sentence starts on the 5th of June.

Weekend!

It's here at last, yah! Okay, finally finished work, there is bar-b-cue smoke drifting past the window, cats look befuddled, folk are coming, the weather is awesome, nary a cloud in the sky. We have lamb skewers, beef and green pepper skewers, ribs, honey glazed and others, burgers, hot dogs, and really a rather disgustingly large amount of beer. The paramour is singing and saying stuff like, 'I'm always covered in soot'and 'flames are normal! Don't worry!'
Weeeeeeeeee. Off work until Tuesday, God bless you Bank holiday weekend.
Have a nice weekend y'all!

Elections.

Dear Pat Rabbitte, if you really do want me to vote for you and your party then getting my name right when you send me out your pledges mght be a start. Your name is Pat, see what I did there? I typed Pat. Not Prunella.
That is all.

I'm probably going to hell...

for this, but it's too funny not to share.

A thursday round up of sorts.

Yesterday's run was good, I ache slightly-as I predicted-but nothing so terrible that I want to scream and gobble Ibuprofen.
The abortion case is to be heard today- I will update as soon as I learn anything.
Our glorious leader B-B-B-ertie is slowly and surely being drowned in a big vat of his own mendacity, money went thither and yon, in brown paper bags and briefcases and dinners with 'friends'. Looks like he won't be able to cry/sulk his way out of this one.
Manchester United sent someone to play for them last night, while the real team sat in a bar somewhere getting waiters to make them up prawn sambos. This resulted in Milan whipping the dopplegangers' ass hard and handing it back to them on a plate.
Some beer was drunk in disgust.
Work on the new M3 moterway has been halted mere days after Minister Dick Roche turned the first sod, as a Wooden Henge (as opposed to stone) has been discovered. FG wonder aloud why 'a combination of €30m and 500 archaeologists could have missed the site.

"This situation would be hilarious if it weren't so serious," FG transport spokesperson Olivia Mitchell said.

"The entire M3 project has been brought to a crashing halt by the discovery of a four-acre archaeological site in its path."

The route had been "selected after many years of examination and excavation and after the NRA assured us this was a safe route in terms of archaeological significance"."

Meanwhile we all get to sit in our cars swealtering away in some of the hottest weather ever recorded for Ireland.
And stil the world turns
Yeah.

Abortion update.

The state has hired a barrister to represent the rights of the fetus at tomorrow's challenge by a 17-year-old pregnant girl to a HSE decision to restrain her from travelling abroad for an abortion.
The High Court has heard that this latest development was requested by the Attorney General.

Lawyers for the AG yesterday told the court that they believed the HSE had no legal power to ask the Gardai to restrain a person simply because that person is the subject of a care order.

Today, the court was also told that the mother of the 17-year-old has been granted legal aid and will also be represented in tomorrow's proceedings. Her mother will also appear to back her in this case.

Much ado about Joe Duffy.

God dammit, this day is busy and I'm barely up two hours. Now I have to go fling myself in the shower get dressed and drive to bloody Castleknock for a meeting. Normally I hate HAVING to do stuff.
However, I will not complain. Later on this evening I do plan on performing my longest run to date. 10 miles to be exact. 10 miles of pinkfaced sweating on the road no less. There will be hills, there will be slopes there will be tired shins and very probably aching chest muscles, (even when I swing and loosen I always seem to get caught out with the clench)
Nope, I will not complain. It's a beautiful day, it's sunny and shiny and the birds are singing. I got to hear somebody called Paul Williams 'a fucking cunt' live on air on the Joe 'voice of the people' Duffy show, the air is filled with the smell of TCP-I played a particularly vicious game of catch the finger with the bigger of the cats, he won- and Chelsea were knocked out of the champion's league, I think John Terry actually shed a tear.
Le sigh, if I had a tail I'd wag it.
Hope y'all are having a Wednesday such as this.

A necessary abortion

"There is no cure or standard treatment for anencephaly and the prognosis for affected individuals is poor. Most anencephalic babies do not survive birth, accounting for 55% of non-aborted cases. If the infant is not stillborn, then he or she will usually die within a few hours or days after birth from cardiorespiratory arrest.

In almost all cases anencephalic infants are not aggressively resuscitated since there is no chance of the infant ever achieving a conscious existence. Instead, the usual clinical practice is to offer hydration, nutrition and comfort measures and to "let nature take its course". Artificial ventilation, surgery (to fix any co-existing congenital defects), and drug therapy (such as antibiotics) are usually regarded as being pointless. Some clinicians see no point in even providing nutrition and hydration, arguing that euthanasia is morally and clinically appropriate in such cases."

Remember this will you? It's important.

Oh the HSE aren't available on the weekend to care for a man and perhaps prevent him murdering his family and then killing himself, no sir, but for a girl trying to end a pregnancy which carries no hope for her unborn child and they're right on the ball. Ready to do battle at all cost.

Observe, from today's Irish Independent.

"A 17-year-old teenager whose baby will not survive after birth has gone to court to stop the HSE preventing her travelling to the UK for an abortion.

In a landmark case, the teenager, who is currently in care, is seeking to challenge directions by the HSE stopping her from travelling outside the State for an abortion.

Pregnant minors, in the care of the state, are currently only allowed to travel abroad to have an abortion if the mother's life is at risk, including the threat of suicide.

But this case could result in making the grounds for having a termination widened to include foetal abnormality.

This issue has never been tested in the Irish courts and legal experts fear it could have the potential to precipitate a fresh constitutional crisis.

The case looks set to reopen the divisive debate over abortion, just three weeks before the general election. And the Government parties fear the hearing - which has been dubbed the 'D-case' - could potentially provoke another backlash from voters.

The coalition only narrowly survived the political fallout which followed its disastrous handling of the A-Case when the Supreme Court struck down our statuatory rape laws.

In the wake of the X ruling by the Supreme Court in 1992, a number of cases were brought of behalf of minors seeking to travel to the UK to terminate their pregnancies.

After the C-Case, the High Court ruled that a child in care could only travel for an abortion if her life was at risk.

Yesterday the 17-year-old girl, who is four months pregnant and from the Leinster region, was supported by her boyfriend in the High Court.

Mr Justice Liam McKechnie ordered the media not to identify her.

She is to be known only as Miss D.

The court heard claims that the HSE had notified gardai and asked them to ensure she did not try and leave the country.

She has discovered that the foetus she is carrying suffers from the condition anencephaly where a major part of its brain is missing.

Infants with such a condition are born without a forebrain and the thinking part of the brain and are usually blind, deaf, unconscious and unable to feel pain.

Miss D's lawyer told the High Court the prognosis and life expectancy for a baby with such a condition after birth is a maximum of three days.

Gerard Hogan SC said that up until the "unfortunate news" last week, there was no question of a termination and this has only arisen in the last few days.

Mr Justice Liam McKechnie was told the girl is in care as a result of an order made by the District Court under the Chid Care Act 1991 at the start of April.

She has claimed she has been advised by the HSE that the gardai have been notified that she is not permitted to leave the State and the care order makes it unlawful for her to leave the State without HSE permission.

The care order had been put in place as a result of the conduct of the girl's mother.

Her father has been absent from her life.

The proceedings in which the girl is seeking leave to bring a High Court legal challenge to the directions of the HSE have been brought by the girl's boyfriend on behalf of the 17-year old.

The girl is seeking leave to seek an order from the High Court quashing the care order made by a District Justice to the extent that it restricts her from travelling from the State.

She is also seeking an order quashing the decision of the HSE to contact the gardai to request that she not be permitted to leave the State.

In the judicial review proceedings against the District Justice, the HSE and Ireland and the Attorney General, the girl is also seeking an order quashing the decision of the HSE refusing to permit her to travel to procure the termination of her pregnancy unless she presented as a suicide risk.

In the proceedings, the girl is also seeking a court order directing the HSE to advise the gardai that they consent to her travelling to the UK. She is also seeking a declaration that there is no lawful basis for interference with her right to terminate her pregnancy.

She claims the HSE decision to prevent her leaving the State to procure a termination of her pregnancy constitutes an unlawful interference with her constitutional rights to personal autonomy, bodily integrity, private life and to travel."

It is bad enough in this country that we export out problems rather than dal with them, but to stop a young woman from ending a pregnancy that WILL result in a deformed baby that WILL die strikes me as barbaric.
Cui Bono here? The mother who must carry this pregnancy for another 24 weeks? Who must go through the agony of birth knowing the result? The unborn fetus? Who will know nothing and die within hours of being delivered? Who is this ruling supposed to benefit?
Despite what some people think there is a grey area to abortion. It is not a black and white issue. Yes, abortion is too common (in my view) and yes I have my questions about it.
But in this case I have none.
There is no happy outcome to this case, there will be no Hallmark moments. Just another long drawn out legal quagmire where the rights of women and logic and compassion are thrown right out the window.
Disgusting.

UPDATE: THe state has said it will not object in the highcourt if the girl wishes to travel for an abortion. There will be a full hearing on the case on Thursday.