At the suggestion of Lee over at QYDJ and by the benificence (did I spell that correctly?) of Matt at Culture Kills... a recent post of mine has been nominated and accepted for a Transmundane Award!
So I bought myself a Creative X-Fi2 today and, flushed with the inevitable sense of self-congratulation that comes from a successful and confident web purchase, clicked the Stumble button on my browser's toolbar to see what surprises the Great Web could deliver.
This was the first thing I found - I thought it only fitting to share:
Music and video by Ricardo Autobahn.
Curiously, the website where I found this was Lemondrop.com; seems to be one for the ladies, so I'm curious as to how Stumbleupon dropped it on my desktop.
While there, however, I discovered that a poll of 5000 women revealed that they consider an Irish accent to be the most sexy.
I had a comment to my last post from a guy named Josh who, it turns out, has a band that goes by the name of, er, Captain Incredible. A heavy rock group based in Dallas, pics and video can be found on their Myspace page.
...in a remake of the 1985 BBC classic thriller, "Edge of Darkness".
The original, directed by Martin Campbell, starred Bob Peck, Joe Don Baker and Joanne Whalley, had a haunting soundtrack by Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton, and was so popular that BBC repeated it twice in the same year, something unheard of in those days. The remake, also directed by Martin Campbell, stars Gibson, Ray Winstone and Bojana Novakovic, and is set to open in the US in January 2010. Music is by Howard Shore, which can't be bad...
the account of an actual murder that took place in rural England in the 1860s, and the Scotland Yard detective whose task it was to investigate the case and unmask the killer.
It's a sad, yet fascinating story, not least because it actually took place, but also because the case is widely accepted as being the progenitor of detective stories in general and the country house murder story in particular.
Detective-Inspector Jonathan 'Jack' Whicher was one of the original recruits to the Detective Police from its inception in the early 1840s, and was widely regarded as one of the best in his field. When the assistance of Scotland Yard was requested by magistrates investigating the murder at Road Hill House, Whicher was selected to travel to the area and unravel what had occurred.
His investigations didn't please everyone, focussing as he did on the family of the victim rather than the servants, and he was not helped by local police who resented his intrusion as an outsider.
The investigation also opened the middle-class Victorian household, heretofore a bastion of privacy, to scrutiny by the masses via the press reports of the case and subsequent inquests and trials.
Not something I would necessarily have sought in a bookstore (Victorian true crime not high on my reading list), I received it as a gift and found it an excellent read.
I would be remiss in not recommending it.
I've also just finished "The Way We Die Now", by Charles Willeford, the last in his Hoke Moseley series, a noir tale about a Miami detective assigned to a secret investigation involving the disappearance of Haitian migrant workers on a farm in a neighbouring county.
Not having read the preceding books in the series (this was recommended by my former creative writing teacher), I have no real picture of the main character other than what I read in the final book, but it looks like he gets what he deserves in the end. Not sure I'll read the other three books in the series, but one never knows...
"Zoo Station" by David Downing is the story of an English journalist, John Russell, living and working in Berlin in 1939 who is approached by the Soviets to write a series of articles about life in Nazi Germany. With a 12-year-old son from a failed marriage to a German wife, and a German girlfriend, Russell is anxious to stay in the Reich as long as possible before the coming war, which everyone accepts as inevitable, breaks out.
Effectively a spy for the NKVD, Russell finds himself also working for the British while evading the SA and maintaining as much of a normal life as one could expect to live in the society of the time, taking his son to football matches and the zoo, dodging his landlady, covering events of the day, etc.
However when a colleague relates details of a story he has uncovered and enlists Russell's aid, the reporter finds himself looking over his shoulder and jumping at every shadow.
At this moment, count centres all over this fair country are busy sorting ballot papers into three piles - Yes, No and Spoiled (for those who spell 'X' with a Y), to determine the result of Ireland's latest Constitutional Referendum, whether to approve the proposed 28th Amendment and allow ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.
It is a feature of our society that any potential change to our Constitution has to be put to the Electorate in the form of a Referendum. There is no bar (as far as I know) to how many times a particular amendment may be proposed, as has been shown in matters involving divorce, abortion and EU affairs.
The Treaty of Lisbon (as it is also known) is designed to 'streamline' the workings of the European Union, now with 27 member states and expected to grow. Among the provisions of the Treaty (according to a pamphlet from the Dept. of Foreign Affairs) is the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into EU law, the appointment of a full-time President of the European Council; and a High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to speak for the Union on the international stage.
This is our second time to vote on this amendment - it was defeated the first time out (just like the Treaty of Nice, which we also got right the second time around), thanks to a lack of information from our Government on what it meant to us as a nation, and also to a concerted 'No' campaign by parties opposed to the Treaty.
Granted, information was available to those who chose to seek it out, but in carefully-worded legalese, and one can only read 'The party of the first part shall hereinafter be referred to as the party of the first part' before giving up and looking for the sanity clause which, as everyone knows, doesn't exist...
The Government told us it was good for the country and urged us to vote Yes, because if we didn't it would go against us in Europe. They didn't say how, but political cartoons suggested that we might have to stand in a corner wearing a pointy hat with a big D on it.
The Opposition parties urged a 'Yes' vote also, possibly on the basis that they'd one day be back in power and could either take credit or say 'It was the other fellow's fault' depending on the state of things when they got there.
But nobody would answer questions in any more detail about specific topics, such as whether Irish law could be determined from Brussels, how it would affect our constitutional position on neutrality; tax rates and ethical issues. For many the decision was made when it turned out that our own EU Commissioner claimed not to have even read the Treaty document.
With such uncertainty, and with more information coming from the 'No' side of the debate, 53% of those who voted, myself included, voted No.
Subsequent debate on the result suggested that we hadn't gotten it right, so our Taoiseach apologised to his EU colleagues and pledged to rerun the referendum, when, he felt, the Irish people would deliver a resounding 'Yes'.
And this time, the 'Yes' campaign put a bit more effort into things, short of making a nationwide broadcast to drum up support. Information was more freely available and there was debate. Yes, we would retain a Commissioner; no, Brussels couldn't force constitutional change; no, we weren't going to be part of a common defence policy, etc.
Disingenuously, however, much was made of the Treaty being about jobs and employment, which it isn't directly, while the 'No' side pushed the idea that we would become part of a federal state, a military superpower strengthening NATO's role in Europe.
Who'd want that?
Anyhow, the Irish people went once more to the polls to exercise their franchise, and when the Xs are counted and the Ys discarded, the feeling (and indeed hope) seems to be that the majority will be about 53% in favour of 'Yes'.
I went to my first management company AGM in four years last week.
Not that it's been that long since I bothered, but because the incumbent directors finally stepped down and allowed us to convene one.
We have been hounding them for years to call an AGM to discuss the building and its condition, but they have refused, something for which I believe they could be brought to task on under company law. But they've skated because they've submitted proper accounts over the years.
But certain developments in the Irish property market mean that our (now ex-)directors are divesting themselves of some of the more costly (to them) assets in their portfolios, including the block that they built and neglected for so long. And by stepping down and turning over control to the apartment owners, they gave us the chance to run things ourselves.
Which is where the despair sets in.
Arguably, the main purpose of the meeting was to agree the financial reports and elect new directors (something I'm not interested in being), however it was also an opportunity for certain individuals to score points against the property management company about their charges and how much things cost. All the time, nag, nag, nag...
Look, I get it; you don't want to pay money for the maintenance of the block. So what'll we use instead?
Magic beans maybe?
For those of you unfamiliar with Ireland, let me explain - we live in a rip-off economy. Everyone charges as much as he can for the product or service he sells, mostly because the government makes sure to get their rather exorbitant cut, and so he has to in order to make any kind of living, but sometimes due to greed. We're one of the most expensive places in Europe to live.
And it's a reality of this apartment block that it's in a high-traffic location, with people moving in and out all the time, so it's high-maintenance as well.
We have a daytime caretaker who also acts as security; he comes in at weekends and does a sweep-up on his own time for no extra money. We also have a cleaning service that comes in twice a week to do heavy cleaning - Bill does it the rest of the time.
We have a night security patrol who come through the place when Bill is off. With three entrances to the building from the street, we can't afford to employ concierge staff (not that that's common here anyway) although I've always thought that would be a good idea.
But despite the services we are getting, and the fact that the committee always tries to negotiate the best price, there's always the same voices sniping about the price of things: the accountant who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing; the teacher for whom her apartment is merely a weekday abode and who 'keeps a house in the country'; the absentee landlord who 'hates everything about the place and the filthy people' yet doesn't want to sell because prices might pick up.
They want the place repainted every year, new carpets, better lifts, steam cleaning, gold-plated toilets for all I know, but seem to expect someone to wave a magic wand...
To the world, I'm Captain Incredible, Mightiest of Men, Hero of Neptune, with powers and abilities greater than even I can comprehend...
Pretty cool, eh?
"To dream the impossible dream, To fight the unbeatable foe, To bear with unbearable sorrow, To run where the brave dare not go;
To run where the brave dare not go, To love, pure and chaste from afar, To strive, when your arms are too weary, To reach the unreachable star;
This is my quest; to follow that star, No matter how hopeless, no matter how far, To fight for the right, without question or pause, To be willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause;
And I know if I only stay true To this glorious quest That my heart will lie peaceful and calm When I'm laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this: That one man, scorned and covered with scars Would fight with his last ounce of courage To reach The unreachable star..."
_Don Quixote De La Mancha, Knight of the Woeful Countenance.
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