Reasons I Don't Understand America Part 11

I find their seeming obsession with penguins quite cute. Sometimes, though, it achieves a certain oddness that is quite unexplainable. Take for instance Micheal Medved's review of Happy Feet. There's much about it that's either wrong or muddle-headed, apparently, but the thing that got me was this:

As in so many other recent films, there’s a subtext that appears to plead for endorsement of gay identity. Mumbles (the voice of Elijah Wood) displeases his parents and the leaders of his community because he’s born different, and makes an impassioned plea that he can’t possibly change – and they should accept him as he is.

I haven't seen the movie so it may be wall-to-wall hot man-on-man love action, but surely gays are not the only people who might want other people to accept them for who they are. To use your own homophobia as a rod to beat those asking for acceptance of our differences is totally perverse.

I'm sure there are plenty of kids, or whoever, out their who would like reassurance that whatever marks them out as different is something that will be accepted by right thinking people. They really don't need that reassurance warped by someone else's guilt trip.

Predicting the Future With The Wire

Slate has an interview with David Simon co-writer of The Wire. He comes across as thoughtful and commited to his show. There's an odd bit where he points out that The Wire can sometimes be prophetic:

In Season 2, we said if someone didn't fix the grain pier [a shipping facility on the Baltimore harbor], someone would come along and turn it into condos. At the time it was sitting idle. By the time we were working on Season 3, they had sold it, and now there are condos over there. The bar where we had the stevedores hang out is being remodeled for a yuppie fern joint. We discussed how police officers can juke stats to make it look like crime disappears, and that was a huge issue in the recent election. The same games are always being played.

Another answer shows that some Baltimoreans aren't quite sure whether the show is a documentary or not:

I know that in West Baltimore, Omar can't get to the set, because we have people going nuts. Or Stringer Bell or Prop Joe. The show has an allegiance in that community. That's its own answer—not that it's popular, but that it's credible. I was just on 92Q, the hip-hop station. The call came in with someone who said, why did you kill Stringer Bell when the real Stringer Bell is still alive? And I said, oh, you mean Mr. Reed? I explained that Reed was not the real Stringer, but that we mix and match stories.

Simon also has an interesting take on regular cop shows:

On shows where the arrest matters, where it's about good and evil, punishing crime, the poor and the rich, the suspect exists to exalt the good guys, to make the Sipowiczs and the Pembletons and the Joe Fridays that much more moral, that much more righteous, that much more intellectualized. It's to validate their point of view and the point of view of society. So, you end up with same stilted picture of the underclass. Either they're the salt of earth looking for a break, and not at all responsible, or they're venal and evil and need to be punished. That's a good precedent for creating an alienated America.

The Probable And The Improbable

It seems that every so often a magazine prints an article about how we worry about stuff that has a low probability of happening (getting avian flu, in the example below) as a oppossed to things that might happen (getting common flu). This time it's Time and it is, as usual, worth reading:

Shadowed by peril as we are, you would think we'd get pretty good at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do us in from the ones that are statistical long shots. But you would be wrong. We agonize over avian flu, which to date has killed precisely no one in the U.S., but have to be cajoled into getting vaccinated for the common flu, which contributes to the deaths of 36,000 Americans each year. We wring our hands over the mad cow pathogen that might be (but almost certainly isn't) in our hamburger and worry far less about the cholesterol that contributes to the heart disease that kills 700,000 of us annually.

To Help With The Last Few Posts

Apparently Thresher's have got some kind of 40% off thing going on.

Blowin' In The Wind Part 5

So, the essential problem was that we only actually had just over an hour in Stansted on the way back and the check-in desks close 45 minutes before the plane takes-off. So on landing we would have some 20-25 minutes to get from our plane to the next one. We did try and mitigate this in all sorts of ways including checking in over the Internet. Apparently, though Ryanair impose a limit of 8 on anyone wanting to check in that way. Quite why no-one could figure, but I'm sure Ryanair have their reasons.

The short time in Stansted was one of the reasons we were only carrying hand luggage, too. As at least two of the party had to check their baggage last time this was getting to be all too moot a point.

The check-in desk people in Derry were very helpful and it turned out we could get priority tickets so we could sit at the front of the plane for an extra two quid. Sorted!

I checked in and got myself a sausage roll (another thing you can't get anywhere other than the UK and Ireland) and carried on reading in the café. Eamon came over with good news. The flight was leaving early. I looked out the window. The gusts of wind were quite dramatic across the long grass and every so often the Bird Control Vehicle drove out to scare the birds. At some point I looked up from my reading material to see a Ryanair plane bank very steeply from the runway and fly off.

"You ought to have seen that" said one of the group. "The plane was coming in like this", he held out a splayed hand and twisted it violently back and forth, "then about a hundred yards from landing the pilot bottled it and flew off. He's probably going to land somewhere else."

He was wrong about the last part. Eventually the plane did land at Derry, and we were let on first, not that it mattered much anymore. The pilot let us know that we were going to sit where we were until the wind had dropped a good bit. This took sometime. Disconcertingly the gusts of wind on the stood plane felt a lot like bad turbulance. The take-off was quick. The pilot must have just hit full-throttle and pulled the plane off the ground the moment that he could. It should probably be noted that for two of our group it was the first time they'd flown anywhere. They ought to be re-assured it'll probably not be that rough again.

By the time the plane in Derry took off our connecting plane had already left Stansted. The next plane to Salzburg was at 6:30. Not too bad just a whole night in the airport until we can check in at 4:30 and get a breakfast in the Wetherspoons. Oh yeah, and another 70 Euros for the flight. Oh and it was a Sunday so the O'Neills decided that it could close at 10:30. So that was at least 6 hours with very little to do except experience first hand how cold and uncomfortable Stansted floor tiles are when you are trying to sleep. And they are cold. And uncomfortable. Tiredness though is it's own blanket and I got a few minutes and the odd hour here and there, at least. One of our number, bored and restless, decided that he would whistle to pass the time. I'm not a morning person really, and for some reason whistling goes through me, so someone whistling first thing in the morning wasn't putting me in a particularly pleasant mood. The whistler was told as much. I think he started talking instead. Still, that was better than whistling.

4:30 came around and that was pretty much it. We all sat silently in different groups waiting for the gate number to shown. One bloke used the time to get his last couple of pints of cider in, I had a breakfast bloomer and a coke. The flight and drive home were pretty uneventful.

All the food and Guiness was great, I'd met a lot of nice, friendly people, and the group as a whole remained surprisingly cheerful. So the whole thing wasn't a total bust, but I couldn't help feeling we'd spent the whole weekend being fucked by the weather.

Blowin' In The Wind Part 4

Since Leeds had lost 3-0 to Southampton earlier that day, and I found "dirty" Leeds oddly old fashioned, I wasn't particularly inclined to argue. Besides Leeds had stopped Preston from getting to the play-offs for promotion last year so I could afford to be a magnanimous.

Still, I didn't want to be around that lot for anymore that necessary so three of us went off to find a chippy. Fish and chips is an odd thing to miss when your abroad, but I do. It's one of my must-do things when I go home. That and get a curry and drink as much decent bitter as is, well, decent. And see friends and family, of course. We went to the Nevenny Grill. I can't remember what the fish was, but it was good, the chips, though, were a little on the thin side and the marrowfat peas weren't really mushy. You can't have everything I guess, but I enjoyed it.

Nevenny Street is also home to the U Drop Inn, which I didn't go into, but it seems to me that it's pub name in search of the right pun. I guess the owner wanted to distinguish his establishment from all the Dew Drop Inns to be found around the world. That said, there does seem to be plenty of U Drop Inns.

Anyway, back to Bonners which was filling up by now. As well a developing a small ever-changing band of people outside each door enjoying a quick fag. The Austrians, who at the age of thirteen are given a cellphone and a packet of Memphis and are told to go out and enjoy themselves, took a while to get used to this. As I'd stopped smoking some 18-or-so months previously I just tried to sympathise with their tales of how cold it was getting outside. I did have a cigar at one point so I did get to go outside with everybody else and meet some new people. We had a good story about how we'd come all the way from Austria to watch a game that had been cancelled so much sympathy was garnered.

Soon enough it was time to get the taxi back to Harkins Bar.

It had been mentioned several times that I sing and, though I wouldn't say that I could play guitar, strum a few chords. Probably too many Guinnesses into the evening a guitar appeared. It was badly out of tune and I usually use a little electronic tuner so I enlisted the help of an Austrian bass player to try and get the thing to play a listenable sound after about half an hour and no joy (terrible, I know) the regulars were, if not demanding entertainment exactly then at least getting a little more vocally curious as to where entertainmant was.

Abandoning the guitar I tried to do Mr Bad Example and then Hallelujah unaccompanied which I think got applause more for trying than anything and then tried to ignore how badly the guitar was tuned to do a well received Dead, Drunk & Naked. I don't know but the punters seemed to enjoy it.

One of our group then got in to a louder and louder argument over whether he came from the place with the kangaroos or was it the place where Hitler was born.

It was time to go home.

Blowin' In The Wind Part 3

Luckily the ground was just too water-logged to really let the snow settle and the snow stopped just as it looked like it was going to get fiercer.

We got the bus into Ballybofey. As always, anywhere, there were roadworks and the delicatest of out number lasted all of about five minutes before needing to be let off the bus. He made is excuses and we left him to it. The countryside between Brockagh and Ballybofey was as picturesque as you'd expect, all little valleys and dales with quaint little houses dotted about. The sort of wind and rain swept countryside that justifies a whiskey after walking through it.

Ballybofey is, in essence, the street you can see on the first page of it's website. More bars than you'd think and a couple of bookshops, it's not entirely devoid of character. It takes about five minutes to clump up and down before you reckon you've ssen it all and head for the designated bar. In this case Bonners Corner Bar. Some of the group had decided to go and do a little more shopping. One in particular wanted to buy a tweed suit. That the shop, Murphy's & Co., was a namesake for the buyer was a particular bonus.

About halfway through the Guardian quick crossword the rumours started. I half heard them at first and paid them no mind, but as the group got back to full-size the question was being asked: "Has the game been cancelled?".

It had. Apparently, although it rains all the time in Ireland and the Finn Harps ground is next to the river, the pitch had become unexpectedly waterlogged and the game had been put off for a day. A day we didn't have.

What we did have was Guinness in front of us and a curious inclination to not feel let down by the news. We moved on to Harley's Cheers Bar.

Harley's is the main sponsor for Finn Harps this year (there is a rotational system among the shops and bars in Ballybofey for sponsorship that was explained to me a few Guinnesses too late) and there was a possibility that they had a few replica shirts on offer. They didn't have one that fit me but most of the group was satisfied.

What Harley's did have was a big, gobby lass from Preston with a small party around her of the sort of Prestonians who hang around with big gobby lasses. One of them, seeing the top I was wearing, said something about "dirty Leeds".

Interlude: Irony

Cynically releasing your cynical "best of" cash-in just before Christmas only to be beaten to the top of the charts by the new Westlife album. I doubt there's too much grumbling in the Houses of Oasis and U2 —it's not like either needed the money— but a little schadenfreude never hurt anybody.

Blowin' In The Wind Part 2

Actually, it didn't turn out too badly. Although 4 hours is a long time to spend in an O'Neills where there's nothing to do except drink and read the newspaper nobody went overboard. One member of the group did disappear for a good while, but seeing as he'd been getting steadily grumpier for no reason anyone else could discern, then this was probably for the best.

Is there a good reason for having you shoes scanned or is Stansted still indulging in the worst kind of security theatre? I know that I certainly felt a hell of a lot safer knowing that everyone's Hush Puppies had been individually scanned for the good of the nation.

Past security in Stansted there's a Wetherspoons which meant that whatever else happened this trip, then at least I'd drunk a couple of pints of proper bitter (Theakstons OP and Bombadier).

The flight to Derry was mostly uneventful. The landing was just a little rough, but the weather seemed to be taking a turn for the worse, so this was almost expected.

Derry Airport did turn out to be a Nissen hut by a runway. Not quite Coventry Airport standards (all the facilities are in one building), but nicely simple.

After getting to Eamons house and enjoying a very good meal provided by our hosts the few who were still awake and willing were carted off to Harkins Bar, a cosy little locals pub seemingly in the middle of nowhere. They do a very fine pint of Guinness and, apparently, it's occassionally visited by stars of all stripes. Thankfully Mick Hucknall wasn't there that night.

Next morning, a fuse had blown leaving us without electricity for a few hours. Still, breakfast was managed —a great full Irish, though with only a few slices of toast. After that a couple of us were still feeling a little delicate, but worse yet it had started to snow. The reports from Austria were that it was 19 degrees and glorious sunshine, in our little corner of Ireland the snow looked like it was starting to settling.

Interlude: Old Drinking Game

A while ago I proposed a drinking game based around an article in the Guardian by Mick Hucknall -- every time you feel the need to mutter "twat" while reading it take a drink. He's had a new article printed, this time about copyright, and the rules remain the same. You'll be too tight to mention by the end of if.