News or No News?

Disclaimer: It’s SoapBox time…

So, as of today we know that Mothers face more discrimination in the workplace than any other minority.

As of today.

Because up until today, only women knew that apparently.

Does that make it news?

… no, it’s NOT news.

Every woman in the world, and every man with a brain, knows this. For a fact. The only mitigating factor is that some women don’t care – and plenty of men don’t. There are depressingly few men out there that really care that mothers are discriminated against. In fact there are plenty that thing it’s only right. After all, we ‘choose’ to have children, don’t we?

Bullshit, I say. Where’s the choice? If all women decided to choose their career rather than ‘choosing’ to have children, what happens? The species dies out. Literally.

So we have this lovely burden, not to mention the lovely ‘process’ involved in bearing children, and what, we have no right to be treated equally once we’ve done our bit for the species?

Apparently so…

Something that has definitively caught my attention recently is the Trócaire Lenten Campaign.  The ads describe at some length the fact that a group of babies are destined to be abused, murdered, desperately discriminated against their whole lives. The punchline being, it’s because they’re women.

I’m sick to the teeth of being told we have equality of the sexes already so we should all just shut up and get on with it. We will never have equality of the sexes because as  concept it’s impossible. What we can achieve, however, is equal rights.

If any other group of people was treated the same way there would be uproar. But what, we’ve been beaten into submission? You’re allowed vote and go to school so shut up and stop asking for equal pay? And when did ‘feminism’ become a dirty word for anyone lunatic enough to question this status quo?

Insufferable. Nonsense.

A correction worth a mention..

So, to correct the spelling below, courtesty of dictionary.com:

shy·ster (shī’stər)
n. Slang
An unethical, unscrupulous practitioner, especially of law.

But here’s the good bit…

Word History: Calling someone a shyster might be considered libellous; knowing its probable origin adds insult to injury. According to Gerald L. Cohen, a student of the word, shyster is derived from the German term scheisser, meaning literally “one who defecates,” from the verb scheissen, “to defecate,” with the English suffix -ster, “one who does,” substituted for the German suffix -er, meaning the same thing. Sheisser, which is chiefly a pejorative term, is the German equivalent of our English terms bastard and son of a bitch. Sheisser is generally thought to have been borrowed directly into English as the word shicer, which, among other things, is an Australian English term for an unproductive mine or claim, a sense that is also recorded for the word shyster.

Weekend chaos…

I’m not usually inclined towards hovering around bars full of rugby fans, but sometimes it can’t be helped. Saturday was one of those days that I didn’t mind though.

For all the fuss beforehand, it’s nice that the biggest story the morning after was the crucial fact that we didn’t beat in England.

We hockeyed them.

It was fantastic.

To be honest though, two of my favourite moment’s of the day arose from the lull between the controverial anthem and the match itself (did I mention we hockeyed them?). As the cameras followed Mary McAleese to her seat in the stands, Bertie the B*****d grappled towards her and did his best to look like her best friend. Either she wasn’t quite ready for his advances, or she’s beginning to realise he’s not necessarily the best person to be seen embracing in public. Especially when he decided to spend match day with one of his ‘good friends’ who ‘helped him out’ in his ‘hour of need’ [that's subtle code for "one of those scheisters(sp?) that bought off the taoiseach that time he got away with blue murder. again."]. Her reaction wasn’t the best bit though. It was the almighty, foundation-shaking roaring BOOOOOOO!! that arose from the presumed-to-be-apathetic crowd of young, gleeful rugby fans…

Now if only they’d vote the way they shout!

Sunday was a day of relaxation and preparation. Sunday was Oscar Night. God they do go overboard! But the four solid hours of wardrobe analysis was worth it for what should have been the intro – Ellen did her best but she was quite blatantly upstaged five minutes into the show.

Helen Mirren is an incredible actress, and a credit to womankind if only for looking twice as good as every woman half her age who appeared on the red carpet last night. The lady’s got class, and there’s maybe not enough of that going around these days. I can only assume that’s why she was given the scar for her performance in the Queen – an award she may as well have had couriered to her office months ago. As I said, she is an extraordinary actress, but it is simply not the extraordinary film it has been hailed as on both sides of this island for many months now.

The great news for the night was the recognition, at long last, of Martin Scorsese’s contribution to the Academy and to film-making in general. His latest cinematic masterpiece, The Departed, got both Best Director and Best Picture – I can’t argue with either, nor do I want to. Maybe this was the greatest expression of the simple fact that the Academy does reward eventually, just not always the right year! At the same time, in this case at least, I think the rewards really are deserved for the specific work in question as well as the extended career Scorsese has enjoyed in the industry.

Finally, I have to mention Little Miss Sunshine, easily one of my favourite films of the year and one I would recommend to anyone with a soul… the good news is Alan Arkin was, as they like to put it, ‘recognized’ for his work in the film, and while Abigail Breslin may have lost out this time I don’t think she’ll have to wait for her 19th nomination before she too picks up a statuette or two…

Get thee through thine Monday Morning

This is easily one of the funniest youtube videos I have ever seen.

Perfect Monday Morning humour.. .

Nice headline at least…

I found this. Will comment later…

Where it all went wrong…

If anyone wants a simple example of what is wrong with (supposedly) Modern Ireland, look no further than the patrons of RTE’s The Restaurant.

No offence to Athlone, really, but let’s face it, these people are in Athlone… yet they eat gourmet food and review it as though they think they are Frank Bruni. Who, incidentally, has just slated Gordon Ramsay’s recently opened London restaurant in New York (obviously a fan of tights..?)

But back to the point. Fifty to a hundred people show up over-dressed, stick their noses in the air (lowering them only to stick them to the bottom of their over-filled wine glasses and inhale in a spectacularly graceless fashion, betraying their true.. class…) and complain about the lack of garnish, or the absence of seasoning.

As with those who watch sports only from the couch, might I suggest that they try it themselves? When they can get five stars from Tom Doorley, they can go right ahead and return their nasal passages to the aforementioned 45 degree angle.

Brilliant

Check this out… what every man needs!

No Béarla returns?

According to the front page of today’s La Nua, the series No Béarla is being re-commissioned for a second series: or, at the very least they’re talking about it.

In case you missed it, or you weren’t in Ireland during the month of January, No Béarla was a documentary made by a guy by the name of Manchan Mangan, the premise being that he would travel around Ireland speaking nothing but Gaeilge and see how far he could get.

I’ll admit now that I didn’t see every episode, but now that I’ve found it on youtube I may go back and watch them again. The first two episodes were nothing like as depressing as I thought they would be, if I’m honest. Newspaper reports leading up to the broadcasting of the first episode suggested that Manchan was beaten out of Dublin with sticks, which is not quite the case. I supposed it’s a case of expectations. If you expect to be treated like a sane person while speaking your national language, then the impact would have been greater, but most of us ‘mad’ enough to speak the language have long since grown accustomed to being questioned about it, along the lines of “you speak WHA’??”. Very enlightened…

Much of the controversy over the first series was based around Manchan’s apparent aversion to the language itself, or maybe it was indifference, I’m not sure. I think people assume that if you can speak the language fluently then you’re some sort of loon who wants to ram it down everyone’s throat with a rusty spoon until they choke on it. Manchan’s approach of “I honestly want to know if anyone can speak this, and if they can’t, can we just stop now??” offended plenty of people, but I’d have to say that personally I found this relatively reasonable. I don’t so much agree with Manchan’s approach, as appreciate where he’s coming from – and given that the series was broadcast mere weeks after FF once again tried to lay claim to all of Irish culture (while failing to on any level suggest that perhaps a man who has been Taoiseach for a decade could have fitted a few language lessons in there somewhere??) with some [more] legislation that is about as forward-thinking as a dead hamster.

The article today featured an interview with Manchan about the reaction to the first series – and I wish I hadn’t read it, because it’s so bloody typical. Not what he said, mind you, but what others said to him. He spoke about a debate he went to in my alma mater, where he was essentially abused for his lack of grammatical accuracy. Which really, really gets to me. There’s this really nasty hyper-critical streak amongst Gaeilgeoirí, and speaking to those who don’t speak the language it’s one of the most off-putting things about trying to learn, or speak, Irish.

Almost everyone in this country has been through a decade or more of ‘learning’ Irish (don’t get me started, again, on the quality of Irish language education in this country… not just now!), which means somewhere in their heads they have the capacity to string a few words or sentences together. With genuine encouragement, those cúpla focail could be extended into at least a basic ability to converse – which is a start, isn’t it? But the belief that saying the wrong thing or getting your tuiseal ginideach wrong will have you burning in eternal damnation is desperately off-putting. Not to mention ridiculous.

Think about it. If you’re learning a new language – for instance my continuing plodding away at Spanish – if you find someone who speaks the language a bit better than you, it’s the best way to try out what you’ve learnt, and crucially the best way to improve. If you go to a restaurant in Spain and accidentally say “I wanted the heated hen” instead of “I’d like the chargrilled chicken” [en español], the waiter may smirk but they’ll appreciate the effort. Here? You get a dirty look and get told to go back and study your gramadach.

This antagonises me mostly out of personal experience of people who won’t speak Irish near me in case I correct them, which I wouldn’t do!! I’m not for a second saying that we shouldn’t teach the language to a high standard, or that we should ignore grammar – but it’s a LANGUAGE, it needs to be SPOKEN before we can worry about grammatical accuracy!!!

Anyway, time to get off the soap-box. For now.

Manchan has a full page of information and resources related to the original series on his page. This includes a link to a recent article he wrote for the Guardian which summarised the series.

**Apologies for a few missing a-fada’s, firefox won’t let me use the shortcut, will attempt to fix it later.. Manchan is the primary victim **

I’ve been bad, I know…

So along with a little bit of a colour change, and a few other bits, I’m going to endeavour to categorise my rants from now on. For everyone’s sake…

My apologies for this year-long oversight!

Woe is Me…

Not that I’d want to make a habit of following on from someone else’s blogging, but it’s no my fault Mr. Lex chooses to channel my brain with what should really be alarming regularity.

So on Thursday I watched the pilot of Studio 60… and yes, it’s a little late to be watching it since I’ve been looking forward to it for ages and was blissfully unaware of the feedback ‘across the water’. But it aired on TV3 for the first time four days ago, and I liked.. a lot… admittedly it lacked the political twist which was in many ways the West Wing’s greatest appeal, it seemed to run along the same lines – having a bit of faith in the potential intelligence of the audience, and taking it from there.

Then, this morning, disaster struck. On a number of levels. First off, there was the rumour – posted by another user on the aforementioned Ferendal (?!) blog – that perhaps Studio 60 was in trouble. A fact hideously confirmed by a quick news.googling. But worse still – Studio 60 is being replaced by a ludicrous OIYIRISH show about… ‘the Donnelly Brothers’…

Why on earth must this ridiculous blood-red-shamrock view of the Oirish (inevitably a ‘clan’ of redheads) be propagated?? It’s right up there with the Lucky Charms approach in terms of both the accuracy of the portrayal and frustration of the portrayed. Would five minutes of research really ruin a writer’s day?? Though, admittedly, that would be missing the point entirely…