Jesus Christ almighty.

If there’s one thing embarrassing about ireland, it’s that despite all the criticism that we pile on america and americans on a daily basis, we love pretending to be them. Whether it be the american fast food franchises littering our nation, TV ads for american TV shows featuring a fuckin David HassleHoff Impersonator, or our own desperate attempt to have an awards show like the oscars or golden globes.

It’s of the last category that the tragic IFTAs are born. It’s so sad. They had a red carpet. The had a ‘star parade’, with such big names as Bob Geldoff, Gabriel Byrne and Grainne Seoige. No sign of course, of any real famous irish people, like maybe Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Cillian Murphy or, god help us, Colin Farrell.

They were presented by that lanky git who has become the staple award show whore of RTE, Ryan Tubridy. He lurched his way around the stage making bad bad jokes and worse introductions.

But the worst part, the worst part of all had to be the music. Obviously most of the budget had been spent on dinners for all the attendees, and they only had €200 left over to pay the music guy. And value being what it is in Ireland, that only bought them €20 worth of music, or ten seconds. They used the ten seconds of dramatic, climactic Saving Private Ryan music for FUCKING EVERYTHING on the show.

Everytime someone went on stage – Waaaaah Waaa Waa WaaWaaaaaaa….
Everytime someone went off stage – Waaaaah Waaa Waa WaaWaaaaaaa….
Everytime someone was nominated for an award and had their head appear in the square of anticipation – Waaaaah Waaa Waa WaaWaaaaaaa….
Everytime there was an ad break – Waaaaah Waaa Waa WaaWaaaaaaa….
Everytime Ryan Tubridy scratched his miserable hole – Waaaaah Waaa Waa WaaWaaaaaaa ….

The SAME BIT OF MUSIC. Every time.

Congradulations IFTAs. You’ve once more made it depressing to be irish.

This morning PirateBay was raided by swedish police.

FUCK IT!

Its just not fair. I haven’t even been given a chance to download anything yet.

Toy Story, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, A Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, Shrek, Shrek 2, Ice Age. These are all top notch entertainment.

But obviously, about a year or two ago, all the major studios saw how well pixar films were doing at the box office and decided to jump on the bandwagon, by hiring as many washed up celebs as possible to provide voices for a bunch of CGI animals, shoehorn some bullshit journey / lesson learning script together and shove the whole fucking embarrassment down our collective throats for an €8.50 cinema ticket.

valiant. the ant bully. barnyard. madagascar. over the hedge. hoodwinked. open season. shark tale. the wild. need I go on? Each one is soulless festering shit heap.

All you studios out there – huddle up real close and I’ll tell you pixar’s secret to success. Its not CGI, and its not talking animals. Seriously.

Pixar titles are good movies because they have original premises, and because they know how to write a good story. They don’t rush anything. They take their time, and they do things write. Pixar are creating, not selling.

If you studios want to make money, you should go and hire a brand new writer who hasn’t been corrupted by the cash cow machine

You wait and wait for an article on the ills of gaming journalism to arrive, and suddenly three come at once! Why? Because everybodys fucking copying everyone else, that’s why. Game journalism hasn’t suddenly gotten worse this month, it’s just that bloggers and journos are reading someone elses articles, and then xeroxing their points in order to look clever.

How about putting that energy into some decent fucking game journalism instead?

assholes.

I used to find Pat Shortt funny. I used to find John Kenny funny too. Then it slowly (over the last ten or so years) became apparent that both of them only have two basic jokes.

1. Irish small towns are backward, and anyone pretending to be from a small town is funny

2. Men dressed in women’s clothing are funny

In fact, through several stage shows and guest appearances, and a barrage of advertisements for eircom, Pat Shortt eventually learnt that he could join these two jokes into one uber joke:

3. Men dressed in women’s clothing pretending to be from a small town are funny

It was from this third, grand unified joke that the show killnaskully came to be. Most of the jokes and plot were pilfered from age old stereotypes of small town ireland, with a bit of father ted stolen for good measure.

The english equivalent, little britain, demonstrates with further aplomb that western europe is teeming with closet transvestites who only seem to find release in the world of TV comedy. I could probably write a whole article on this phenomenon, and its sister phenomenon, the prevalence of gay bashing as a form of humour on TV that people will hopefully one day realise is just not funny anymore.

But I digress. I’m giving out about Pat Shortt here, not TV comedy in general.

This radio ad is painful to listen to. Partly because they play soundbites of one of his gigs that make no sense whatsoever on their own. But mostly because they managed to sample a laugh thats more irritating than that crazy frog ringtone, and play it three times during the 30 second ad.

It grates on my nerves so much it makes me want to pull the radio off the wall, find pat shortts mansion in limerick or wherever the hell he lives, ring his doorbell, wait for him to answer, and then bludgeon him to death with said radio.

fuck you in the library with the candle-stick, you spineless cretins.

The Kaiser Chiefs suck balls, and that is that.

It might seem stupid to say “if you can’t see it, its not there”. But its equally stupid to say if you can’t see it it must be there. Would it not make more sense to say that our theory of gravity might be just a tiny bit off? Maybe all the gravitational forces in the universe do add up, we just haven’t measured them all properly?