fair warning...

during my christmas break in ireland a few months ago i learned that an uncle of mine, who felt it necessary to relocate to singapore about 10 years ago, would be visiting ireland himself this coming july, the 8th to be exact...along with his kenyan wife, 10 year old son and 1 year old triplets...(diverse and fertile family no?) i haven't seen any of them for nearly 6 years now, a combination of bad timing and circumstance ever since i moved to the big banana.

i was also informed that my buddy, paddy, of the dodgy stag-do-location fame, was gettin married on july 11. right there i had 2 solid reasons for a home visit in july.
fly in on friday the 8th after work, see the family...go to the wedding on the 11th...wake from the guinness induced coma sometime round friday and fly back on sunday the 16th, ready for work on the monday...

i mark this up on the calender that hangs in the front office at work...a sort of shrine to doctor's appointments, dentists, holidays and so on that some of us utilize for the purposes of informing our collegues of our future absences. i mark july 8th to 16th on the calender as my summer time off...i do this on january 9.

time goes by and i learn that one of the owners of the company is getting married in july...and the word goes out that time off for anyone other than him in july has been withdrawn...sort of like a chain gang member having his weekend furlough revoked cause he didn't scrub the john well enough.

now i thought 6 months was fair warning for my time off but the boss calmly informs me the other day that "august would be better".

"but i have a wedding and relatives to see in july".

pause......staring contest............pause................

"august would be better" and he just walks off!.........dick. (i ain't missing no irish wedding by the way:)

irony is strong on a trans-atlantic flight...

so i'm high-tailing it back across the pond for the aforementioned stag do this past weekend and i can't help but second look a guy in business class as i walk through to the cheapseats. it was one of those moments when you are convinced you know who it is but for the goddam life of you the name won't come to mind.

i take my seat but can't shake off the bug of trying to work out who this dude was...i'm kinda bad like that. so i start flicking through the mental catalogue, movies, tv shows, real life...and finally it comes to me. the dude is an actor in a show i've never even seen; scrubs. john c mcginley is sitting in business class heading to northern ireland for some reason or other. no big deal right?

well, the irony comes into play after the flight. i always feel like a ball of grime after flying for 5 or 6 hours...touching public stuff yada yada. so i head to wash up in the airport bathroom before our bags come out and who is in there already straining the spuds, only mr mcginley. again, nothing interesting. but i found it ironic that a dude who acts in a famous show called scrubs just zips up the weapon and heads out the door without a quick hand wring under the hot water. scrubs? doesn't scrub?

and for my next act...antisemitism...

so dwarf cruise not only succeeded in raising the interests of hunters and psychologists alike with his rave about eating his newborn's fresh placenta, he has now ruffled the feathers of a much more opinionated group; jews.

according to cnn and of course they are always right...'suri', the named picked by south park fearing cruise and former dawson creekonite katie holmes for their new daughter may mean pretty things like 'rose' in nubian and 'sun' in sanskrit but neither of those highly used tongues are very popular in modern day america. instead, hebrew is of slightly greater relevence in the states today and apparently suri in this language means a fairly blunt 'get out of here'.

now you can take your pick of contenders for the group they are pointing their directive toward. jewish folk as a whole is a bit obvious, maybe all religions other than scientology should get out of here...or critics of mission impossible 3...or gay bashers, because i can feel the heat from cruise over here...or maybe even holmes's parents who have got to be less than happy that their pretty, smart daughter has been brainwashed by mr homoerotic mc topgunner.

"an incredible development here mitch! r kelly, john travolta and tom cruise have all come out of the closet!"......classic line:)

tom cruise appears to be a cannibal...

i haven't seen the article but apparently the latest madness to come from the camp of dwarf cruise is that he is going to eat his own child's placenta; according to gq magazine he says...

"i'm gonna eat the placenta, too. i thought that would be good. very nutritious. i'm going to eat the cord and the placenta right there."

well fuck me pink, what does this cat have to do to get arrested? this is the same guy who lectured brooke shields about using post-partum antidepressants...seriously, does he think that chowing down on bits of baby is going to keep things cool after that brainwashed idiot holmes pops her cork?...is he going to offer it around to the staff on hand for the birth?

"here, midwifey chick...have a bite of cord, its delicious." beams the toothy operating theton vii

no argument...

reading cnn's report today about the great rudy giuliani's testament during the piece of garbage that is zacarias moussaoui's trial really gets me heated about the whole death penalty issue.

i'm really interested to see if any sane person can argue against wiping this slimeball off the face of the planet in a heartbeat. he not only was supposed to have flown a fifth plane into the white house on 9/11 and knew of the other four...he now sits in court laughing or feigning boredom.

giuliani described seeing the second plane crashing into the south tower (an event i watched myself from a half mile away on a rooftop), he described watching a couple holding hands as they jumped out of a window and fell a thousand feet to their deaths and finally described the towers falling and the debris as a "nuclear cloud going through the streets".

moussaoui, the lowest, most vile, disgusting piece of scum to ever enter a us court smiles in response...has no remorse, no regret. he should be dragged out by rabid dogs and lowered slowly into a bacon slicer....

there is no argument in the world against killing him immediately....he has no right to life. he is a sane, calculating member of a team that mass murdered thousands of americans.

i don't care what nutty liberals we have in this town. don't even bother trying to formulate a reason not to dispose of this trash.

the exile's plight...

dominating the front pages of the irish papers here in the us and indeed those of many other publications directed at the respective groups of immigrants who reside in this country is of course the debate about immigration reform that is currently banging around the halls of the senate. there approximately 12 million undocumented, illegal, out-of-status, whatever you want to call them, people living and working in the states today. 40,000 of which are said to be irish born.

a bill proposed by senator's john mc cain and ted kennedy brings new hope to the irish who have all but lost faith in ever becoming legal in america. simple things taken for granted by many of us have been systematically made impossible for the undocumented in the years following september 11 2001 - driver's licenses, medical insurance and the biggest problem of all, travelling home to ireland and getting back into the states again.

the irish lobby for immigration reform is currently working hard to promote and educate people about the irish exile's plight in america...a successful and hugely well attended rally in washington d.c. was just one of many such events organised to highlight the lissue.

please take the time to read more about this ongoing issue.

westchester business journal: shadow workers

cnn: mc cain report the irish voice

cnn: immigration debate high stakes at the polls

the irish echo: senate surprise

traffic tickets me arse...

so today while traversing the not-so-friendly length of 125th st in manhattan i was happily blathering away on the old dog and bone and, while catching up on some weekend scandal, i happened to see a pig car coming in the opposite direction. now, at the time i didn't think much of it; sure, i'm not supposed to be on the phone but surely they're not gonna bother a working man going about his business? sure enough, at the next red light the bastards pull up beside the old truck and direct the aforementioned working man to the side of the road.

"why you on de phone?" came the grammatically perfect question.

"because i forgot i couldn't use it in the city" came the disinterested reply.

now, bad enough was the fact i was late getting back to a job, i get ten fucking tickets a week already and i should really have a god damn hands free kit (thats more than one fact but let it slide people) but adding to my woes was the location of this incident, right on 125th st and 5th ave. for anyone not privvy to the geographical/racial variations of this fine town just let it be known that the white boy getting the ticket was definitely something worth having a look and a laugh at.

"look at dat white boy drivin that big ole bronco...who he think he is? OJ?"
"go on officuh. strip search his white ass...i wanna see dat"

something like that it went...

no points on the license this time, just a $90 wallet lightener but i will have to try and pick my traffic infringement areas a bit better for the next round...