The trouble is you never can tell..

When a marketing push takes an unexpected turn..

You really never know just exactly how your content is going to be consumed do you? I found this gem on eMusic today. Beware it could happen to you. Maybe there should be a database of potentially hilarious truncated band names and album titles? Answers on a post card please…

Lisbon, and on and on..

All stand for Lisbon part 2. What does it all mean? As someone who did vote last time, I feel a certain degree of annoyance at being asked to vote again for the following reasons:

1) It makes a mockery of the entire democratic process. We were asked to vote, we did, then oops, computer says..no..wrong answer.

2) Where will this kind of thing end?

The next time I am asked to choose between the political wannabes and chancers that we call our political elite, and I put an x beside whoever looks the least likely to do me some personal harm, will the voting machine (lol) suddenly spring to life and shake, flashing a warning and announcing in the best voice synthesis that money can buy – “You have voted for the wrong candidate, please go to Ministry For Truth for re-education?”. I mean seriously. This is the thin end of the wedge.

So even though I /do/ have a rather ambivalent attitude towards the democratic process as an Irishman I feel duty bound to honour the democratic process due to the bravery of Pearse, Connolly, McDonagh et al, as they did lay down their lives to rid Ireland of the colonial yoke wielded by perfidious Albion. However, that’s about where it stops. Asking a load of Donkeys who they want to lead them will yield – well – a Donkey. I have nothing against Donkeys I may add, but I would have as much faith in voting for the neighbours cat to lead the Irish people to the promised land as I would in our current crop of fearless leaders. Alas, the cat isn’t likely to put himself forward as a candidate, which is a shame – we need a political animal with cat like skills of preservation and a certain alacrity and perceptiveness that you just don’t find in humans. Also the ability to quickly climb a tree may come in handy.

But I digress. Lisbon is /not/ about the current Fianna Fail administration but it could easily /become/ about the current Fianna Fail administration. The donkeys are not happy, are they concerned about us all walking into the arms of a European superstate? Where we freely surrender our ability to govern ourselves to some nice man called Franz, with a degree in Business Administration and a post-grad in politics – who as far as he is concerned thinks the troubles in Ireland were just a tiff, because we all now shop in Tesco? No, these things aren’t a concern. Some vague morality posturing is foremost in the minds of Coir, wrapped up in flannel about the minimum wage but really its about the unborn. But as Coir will soon discover, they just can’t successfully stem the tide with cheap shots of disinformation about the minimum wage as the Catholic church emits a death rattle. Many will vote no just to have a pop at Fianna Fail, which is daft, and pointless as many of these fools voted for them in the first place. Maybe each country gets the government it deserves.

Either way the ship has sailed, if we didn’t want a superstate we shouldn’t have adopted the Euro, what more of a come to bed signal does anyone need? We are in bed now, roll over and scratch. Nice. I mean the treaty, not nice.

So why are we so quick to surrender ourselves to foreign powers? Is there something wanting in the Irish psyche? Do we so miss the 800 horrible years of horrible struggle, hardship, civil war under the rule of Britain that we long for the comforting arm of a stronger nation that we can take shelter of? We are making such a balls of our country right now, should we be asking the Brits back? Oh, sorry, we were on our own for a bit an didn’t like it. There were some tough decisions to be made and a lot of cute hoors made money on the back of the new aspirational middle class..suckers..sorry the public.. Please come back and mind us!

Well, no. That’s not a solution, is it? However, you really would be fool if you thought that we could go it alone and say no to Lisbon. Aside from trying to live with the diplomatic fallout (imagine the uncomfortable silences at breakfast while our Irish diplomatic stiffs munch croissants in the Borschette). Like it or not Europe is the model of the future. We (humanity) are so dependent on each other to prop each other up in the quest for the great American dream of conspicuous consumption and endless sense gratification. At least Europe has history, art, great music and literature. Sure the American Indians would have had that too, if we gave them a chance, and they were not all slaughtered by greedy WASPs looking for the new Jerusalem. Only on that score we will never know.

So what to do, Yes/Non? Oui/Non? Ja/Nein? Or is the fact that the only referendum to take place is happening in one of the smallest most insignificant suburbs off, off Broadway (sic) an indicator of what Europe really thinks of us? I think we are boned if we say no. Quicker than you could say “Bjork” we would go down the swanny without the Euro paddle and all its subsidies. God, image it, a country without EU directives. We would never be able to find our way home from the pub. Or we wouldn’t want to leave it. If we say yes – will we end up in a trade war with China over who has a right to sell ’smart economy widgets’ to the Philipines? Or will our children get dragged into an oil war? Or the next time Berlesconi publically offends Angela Merkel will we have to defend her honour by talking up arms due to this new system of alliance? Hmm, maybe that would be a war worth fighting.

Stress is Shite

Yes, its official. Stress is shite. Does your dinner somehow taste stale? Even when you make a spicy Arrabiata, does it seem like there is no zing? Do you feel either always ‘on’ or like you can’t get out of bed? Do re-runs of Fawlty Towers fail to make you chuckle? Well, you are probably stressed out. The last symptom is particularly worrying.

There is a cure. Personally, after having a totally busy year in my day job as a consultant, I have started to take the power back. It’s the little things that save you. After a couple of hectic years where I got involved in HTML 5 and the W3C Protocols and Formats Working Groups, which meant that I was often working evenings and weekends, started an MSc, I recently started to take my lunch hour at work. Yes, it may not match the more popular historical revolutions, or even the velvet one, but for me it was a revelation.

Another shock to the system was not staring at my computer during lunch, or opening Thunderbird to check mails from time to time during the evening, ‘cos I just /had/ to. I also have decided to finish work at 6! Revelation!! No more catching up on nerd techie lists when I could be watering my plants or cutting up sine waves in my recording studio, or improving my Jazz guitar chops.

It is “mea maxima chillin’ in rancho relaxo” from now on. You don’t get any extra love for working weekends, and the macho bullshit of being always working and being always ‘on’ in our over connected society is no longer cutting any ice with me. Stress makes /everything/ seem over important while slowly bleaching your heart. It creeps under your skin to slowly steal away your sense of peace and balance. You end up cranky, unfulfilled and always chasing your tail and that’s /before/ you get to work. The lines become blurred.. where does your work life end, where does your private life begin? So turn off the phone! Abandon all forms of Information and Communication Technologies! It’s your life really, your employer just rents you for the best bits.

Spark of Life

I found this excellent video on a Hare Krishna Video file sharing website. It is a little dated but deals with the big questions (‘Who are we?’, “What is life really?’ “Why is Ryan Tubridy so popular?”) in a very accessible way. Tired of talking about ‘The Apprentice’ or ‘Americas got talent’? Try this subject matter out on your work colleagues and see how it works out. Quicker than you can say ‘You’re Fired!’ they will start to look at you in a totally different way – and probably start not returning your calls. I say ‘That’s ok, I never liked you anyway!’, so hey lets struggle with the big questions around the water cooler.

A Shopping Center ate my Sovereignty

There is a lot of talk on the wires about how the price wars between Tesco and its competitors over the border in Northern Ireland are having a negative impact on not only the exchequer balances of the Republic but also on our identity as a nation.

It is certainly true that Irish suppliers will need to cut costs if they want their products to be prominent on the shelves of these multinational cuckoos, and in these times of lean margins and leaner profits, they may be hard pressed to do so.

I empathise, and agree.  Some kind of Irish protectionism is needed in order to preserve jobs and sustain industry in Ireland.  The government should lead the way, some chance you say. They couldn’t seem to find their way out of the Dail bar at the moment. Nonetheless the question of our national identity being under threat is simultaneously a chimera of both nonsense and total gravity.

On one hand we as a nation seem to have sold ourselves to the highest bidder to the extent that what is “real old Ireland” only comes now on a DVD, or stock piled from tat in the “build your own Irish pub” warehouses that are springing up to feed the global thirst for the Irish pub franchise. On the other hand, we /are/ being absorbed by the pervasive international nature of business, but so is everybody else.

On one hand people complain there is little sense of organic, real Ireland anymore – and we have lost it, as such. I don’t know if that is entirely true as surely identities are always in flux anyway? We are only experiencing accelerated change and therefore take shelter in the past. The past is its own place and over time becomes so elastic – asking three people about an experience they all shared will make you wonder if any of them were there at all.

People have lost faith in Church, State, the market and lastly each other. It follows that the vacuum needs to be filled – but we need more than X factor and Simpsons repeats for a staple diet, lest soon that rumble in our stomach leads us to believe there is an existential hunger that needs to be addressed when the superficial distractions of modern life fade with the dying cathode.

Personally, I still want to believe in people, in each other – that the demands of our time will bring out the best of us and that we may look at the worst in ourselves and each other with only a passing fancy and realise that we are not alone. It is healthy to be part of an organic whole rather than dazzled by flickering self interest. And that is the rub. Self interest vs. the communal interest.

Maybe falling markets and collapsing housing prices will be for the best if we can collectively learn to appreciate what we /do/ have and each other, so we can be of support to our communities and the wider world in times of need. If we come away from these dark times with a sense of real value, then it will all have been worth it – but alas we may forget..again.

So will Tesco eat my sovereignty? Dunno, I don’t shop there.