P.S. I Screwed You

I did this one up for somem one else and since it didn't get used, and I kinda liked it anyway, I said I'd post it. It's the poster for the movie of Bertie's b-buke.

Hell Hath No Fury...

If livid hate and an uncontrolable desire go buy pitchforks and torches had a colour, it would be a rosey shade of freckled pink and still have a puzzling amount of Mediterranean sand uncannily crammed in various orifices.

Imagine coming home from holidays to find you'd been robbed. You'd be a touch upset wouldn't you? And no doubt you'd kick yourself if you didn't have some kind of insurance too.
Well that's pretty much what's just happened to me, though not exactly.

For you see it wasn't some junky scumbag motivated by need and a distaste for honest work. That, at least, is insurable. But there doesn't seem to be any insurance against commercial or corporate theft.

I just recieved a letter from my former robbing scumbag, NATIONWIDE Renting Agency. It was with regard to my former appartment.
Now, before I continue, I'm going to give you a little more detail about this appartment. When we first rented it, it looked like a crime scene. No two walls had the same pattern of dirty, moisture stained, 1930's design wallpaper. The dirty blue carpet, faded and worn, was stained by a large,dark streak, that made it look like a blood soaked body had been dragged across it.
The bathroom wall beside the bath had caved in an area of about 1m squared. It was dirty. It was squalled. But it was in an excellent location, a minutes walk from rue Victor Hugo (Lyon's Graffton Street) in the city centre and I had been staying on a mate's couch for four months at that stage. Herself's dad, a bit of a DIY enthusiast reckoned we could knock her into shape. He saw potiential in it, and he was right.

We stripped the carpet a.k.a people's exhibit A. We put in a high strength, heat and sound insulating lino. We stripped the wall paper, all eight layers of it, glued one on top of the other over the years. We found the walls were shite, so we treated them, applied a fibre-glass wallpaper and painted it white. We fixed the hole in the wall of the bathroom. Meself and herself set about decorated our nest with care and enthusiasm of a couple living together for the first time. Two month's I worked every day until I had to go work in the bar at night and on my days off, and in the end the place was the dogs bollocks.
And that is pretty much the way I left it when I moved, a little lived, a little loved, but still a pretty nice little appartment to live in.

Now these rat scumbags, these leech's on the propertyless, these swindler's of both landlord and tenant (though the property barons can afford a little leeching here and there to maximise potiential profit) are trying to stick me for €560.31 for repairs to the appartment.

Get this list of ficticious bullshit claims;

Kitchen:

Cabinet under kitchen sink : This plaster-board piece of shit was in bits. It was shabbily made the boards at the back were missing and it seemed to be built on rough rubble rather then a concrete chape.
The only possible complaint they could have is that Herself had, during a period where we gave names to pretty much everything in the appartment in a repulsive lovey-dovey kind of way (I would add, in my defence, that this coincided with the period where I got laid every night), and painted those pet thing with their names on the cabinet doors. When I moved I didn't have the heart to paint over it.

Silicon Joints: I scubbed the bollocks out of the blackened silicon of the tiles around the sink and in the end had to do with.

Electrical socket: This refers to the dangling 60 amp socket my oven was plugged into. I plugged in my oven once when I moved in, and out once when I moved out. Other then that it is exactly the way I found it.

Living Room:

Replugging screw holes: This one's arguable, as I had hung a print of Van Gogh's Starry Night on the wall, but they seem not to have noticed the €100 worth of shelves I had attached to the wall over the fire place of the 35m squared appartment despretely lacking in storage space.

Repainting ALL the walls of the appartment: Fuck off, those walls were spotless and if we hadn't treated them they'd be in real shit by now.

Telephone socket: WHAT??? A telephone connection is not part of the contract. There were already three unfunctioning telephone socket located at various points around the appartment but I got another installed AT MY EXPENSE. It was working perfectly when I left and in fact, because I had forgotten to tell France Telecom in time, the line was still operational for a further ten days after my contract ended.

Toilet:

Descaling : Otherwise known as Toilet Duck? Well that's what I used and the toilet was same decent shape when I left.

New toilet seat : What? I left them the same cheap white plastic seat that was on it.

Bathroom:

Descaling : What exactly?

Silicon joints : We rebuilt the wall for fuck sake!

I hate these cunts, I really do. I wish I didn't. Love and Hate are both forces of attraction and I don't want to pass my time thinking about and dealing with these people. I wish they'd go away. I wish the earth would open up beneath their feet and drag them down to her deep abyss.
I pissed off and now the angry voice is back inside my head.

What?
Yeah I know where there's an armoury, sorry what was that again?

Well no, but I could learn and I watched alot of westerns when I was a kid...

Tales From A Card Board Wasteland

The boxes lay scattered around like fallen boulders in some spaghetti western, some empty, some half full. A mess of objets cluttered the floor, fighting for space with the electrical cables that snaked in a haphasard manner like streams on a canyon bed, and somewhere in the disarray a computer searched for a wireless connection.

It didn't take long. There were many connections available here, and since the architect of this particular building had obviously been inspired by the paper walls of Japan's great Pagodas, nearly all the signals were strong.
Finally the computer found what it was looking for.

"Er, excuse me", the Computer said, or at least would have said, had it spoke English rather than a complex series of binary zeros and ones.

"Yes, what do you want?", replied the Connection, or at least would have, had it spoke English...etc, etc

"Listen I'm awfully sorry to bother you, but you see we've just moved in and, what with one thing and another, well we haven't got around to getting an internet connection yet, and well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind me using you", the Computer went on.

"OK, I'm a Neuf Telecom Hotspot. I am part of a service open to all Neuf customers. Simply enter your Neuf user name and password and as a Neuf customer you can have internet access anywhere in France. Great eh? Nothing simpler" the Connection replied.

"Ah, well I might have a bit of a problem there, you see I'm not a Neuf Telcom customer", said the Computer.

"Oh well in that case I can't help you. Neuf customers only I'm afraid", replied the Connection in one of those snappy little tones that one associates most with civil servants.

"Fair enough, fair enough", sighed the computer "but ah, you said I need a Neuf user name and password right?"

"Yes", the connection answered, "I am a Neuf Telecom Hotspot. I am part of a service-"

"Yeah, yeah I got that", interrupted the computer, "but you said I a user name and password, not necessarily my own right? I mean I could use a mate's user name and password couldn't I?".

The Connection thought about this for a while.
"Well" it said hesitantly, "I suppose, but that's not very moral is it. I mean that means your eating up some poor guy's bandwidth and your not even a Neuf Telecom customer".

"True", the Computer conceded, "But, as I understand it, Neuf Telecom charges it's customers for a wireless router and a certain bandwidth, right?"

"Yes indeed", the Connection piped up, "and as a Neuf Telecom customer you can avail of our Hotspot service allowing you to connect anywhere in France. So if you're talking value for money..."

"But Neuf Telecom don't actually go around France sticking up wireless connections everywhere do they", the Computer cut in."In fact, they charge their customers for the router and the service but neglect to tell them that the router will automaticaly set itself up as a Hotspot. Thus, in essence, Neuf Telecom sells a customer a certan bandwidth and then resells that same bandwidth to someone else, right?".

"Well in the tight economic circumstances that we find ourselves...hrrmmm" said the Connection with a non chalant virtual shrug of the shoulders, "there are many elements to be taken into account... you know... the economy... and er.."

"You see the basic principle I'm trying to get across to you" continued the Computer, "is that the the owner of the wireless router you happen to be located in will still be losing bandwidth, but because of Neuf Telecom and their policy of not informing customers that the Neuf Box wireless router will automaticaly set it self up as a Neuf Hotspot so basicaly Neuf can go and fuck off with themselves".

"Here now buddy", said the Connection, his tone rising to anger,"do you want me to be out of a job or what? You can just piss off right now or I'll-"

Username : pavlov Password : ********

"Hi. Welcome to the Neuf Hotspot Network. Please wait to be redirected to your home page" chirped the Conection.

Moving, Agencies & Other Reason To Go On A Killing Spree

I wish I could just climb into one of the boxes that I’ve steadfastly avoided packing and just live there.

Well, I suppose technically I could but that would probably involve more sleeping under bridges or on Métro grills then I’m accustomed to. Mind you, I could drink as much as I wanted and the summers are hot in Lyon but I think I’m to used to my creature comforts, like walls and a roof. Fuckin’ spoiled I am.

If I had any idea how much of an enormous and expensive pain in the hole it would be I would have stayed put. You see in France you can’t just call up the number on the ad, visit the place and then write a check for the rent and the deposit.
No, far too straight forward for the fermented grape-juice drinkers that. And sure where would you fit the scam into such a simplified system. Just ask anybody in finance or politics and they’ll tell you.
"Make it complicated, fucking complicated. Bedazzle the fuckers. Bury them under a mountain of bullshit and you’ll get them coming and going".
Oh what I’d give for a tub of Vaseline and a gentle loan shark!

You see, in France, 90% of rented accommodation goes through agencies. This, I believe, is so rich bastard property barons can make a killing without ever having to have their names dropped in any kind of tax assessing way.

So if, for example, you fancied having somewhere to live, you look at the ads and you call the agency. Then, because the agency is only open during office hours, and you happen to work in an office too, you ask your boss to leave early to visit an apartment.
Then you go to the agency to be talked down to. They take your ID (in case you deem it viable to do a legger with keys and move in on the sly) and give you the keys.
You visit said apartment and start to discover that accommodation agencies are to adjectives what Yuri Geller is to spoons.
Idéal Etudiant (Ideal for student) actually means crummy bed-sit.
Cosy means you will be living in a cleaning cupboard.
And one of my personal favourites A proximité de [someplace] means that if the building were twenty stories high, and it was an exceptionally clear day, you might just catch a glimpse of [someplace] on the horizon.
Then you return the keys to the agency, explain politely that it wasn’t, in fact, what you were looking for and indeed bared no resemblance to the description in the ad and listen patiently while the dye-job gobshite agent tries to pawn you off with some of the other shit holes they haven’t been able to off load, all the while telling you how you won’t find anything better at this time of year.
Repeat this process about eighteen times until you find, roughly, what you were looking for, which was in fact something like you already have.

So now you have found your target apartment. Time to make the dossier.
What? Oh yes, that’s right, you didn’t know about the dossier. Well, you see, you couldn’t just pony up the cash, shake Dye-job’s hand and say “Smell ya later”. Not at all.
No, instead you have to prove that you are worthy of paying rent. They want you to earn three times the rent. Not around three times the rent but exactly or indeed more then three times the rent. To the penny, or centime if you want to get all contemporary about it. God help you (for the Devil is surely on their side) if your willing to throw in an extra tenner from the remaining two-thirds of your salary so as not to live in a converted toilet. No sir, You can fuck right off.
So now it’s time to get to know your photocopier, learn to love that deep hum, marvel at
it’s sliding light, for you have much work to do.

Two rent receipts, three pay slips, your tax returns for the last two years (I shit you not), ID, bank details (not a bank statement mind you, but details, account number, the lot), a statement from your employer attesting that you are indeed currently employed and sure while your at why not dental records and a complete list of everything your mother ate during 1985.
Not content with that, you also need a guarantor, just in case it turns out that your mother actually ate a fried egg instead of a boiled egg on the 10 July 1985. My boss agreed to be mine.
But wait! Stall the ball. What if the boss, despite having his own business and enough cash to hire your useless arse, doesn’t earn three time the rent of one of his employees. What then. Well sure, just to be on the safe side, why not get him to do a few photocopies of his own.
Start off with his and his wife’s bank details and ID. Now that he’s getting used to the idea throw in a copy his business’ balance sheet for the past year and sure why not the property tax on his house too. And then, the icing on the cake, get him and him and his wife to copy out, by hand, the Act of Guarentee.

Then comes the big day. Your dossier has been accepted. Hooray! Your delighted, even though you know for a fact that you were the only person to visit the apartment and submit a dossier because you talked to the person moving out and he’d explained that the agency didn’t have his new phone number and you were the only person to come and knock on the door. Still, Dye-job assures you, it was close.

And now the real fun begins. You need to insure your new rented accommodation. Heaven forbid that some poor property baron should have to pay for a burst pipe in one of his own buildings. There you go, €190 for the year. Add to that your first months rent and one months rent as a deposit and you're starting have a figure with a respectable amount of digits.

And now Ladies and Gentlemen, la pièce de résistance! A cheque for some €650. And what for you might ask, well the agency’s fee of course. Dye-job has to earn a living too you know. That’s 650 quid you will never see again. Gone. Disappeared into sunset of the agency’s balance sheet.

You know something. I might just get back to packing those boxes after all. Because around here, if you end up under that bridge or on that Métro grill then you’re never coming back. You may as well get shit faced.

National Blasphamey Day

------ UPDATE ------

Biggles, the brother sent me a link for this and I just had to post it.

----------

The National Blasphamy Day was the idea of Bock The Robber (see blogroll) as a protest against the absolutely stupid and cringe worthy proposed libel law in Ireland.
Basically the new law would expose blasphemers, or anyone who causes offence to somebody else's deeply held fantasies, to a €100,000 fine. What a crock of shit.

It's just another bullshit law by bullshit politicians, in order to work everone up and take the people's mind of the governments incompetence and treasonous corruption.

I never had finacial relations with that banker...

Now I could write a scathing, inciteful, witty and passionate denounciation of religion, causing men of the cloth to throw away their dog collars and head for the local brothel (that would be some change alright) an even causing Tom Cruise (should he read it) to suddenly ask himself "What the fuck have I been on for the last couple of years".

But I won't. They say discretion is the better part of valour, and besides I don't have the time, so instead I'll settle for this image, which about sums up my feelings on the subject of religion.

Oh and I just found this one too, which I'll post just for the fun of it.

Andrew Bird Concert

You know Andrew Bird? I didn't. So when The Yank suggested we go to the upcoming concert, I thought Why not. I don't go to enough concerts these days.
So we got the tickets. I asked Herself (in order to pre-emptively avoid being asked why I didn't invite her);

Hey babe, fancy coming to a concert with me, The Yank and his buddy?
I was expecting a no but lo and behold I was once again out foxed by my better half.

Sure, who is it?

Um.. some dude called Michael Bard I think. I don't know him but The Yank reckons he's good. I should also mention at this point that The Yank is a pretty handy guitarist and has some excellent taste in music. It was after all him who introduced me to the Dave Matthews band.

A little hesitant this time she went on

OK, but let me know the details

Sure babe, I'll let you know.

And so it was the day of the concert that I went to the site of the Lyon city transport, TCL, to find the best way of going to the gig. The Yank had mentioned the name of the venue and had hinted that it was on the outskirts of the city but it wasn't until I told Herself that the concert was in Feyzin, a tiny village outside Lyon that the I smelled the air of heavy gun powder on the wind, blowing from a battle to come.

Fuck, you might have let me know. It'll take forever to get there, that's out in the wilds.

And so began the stressful rush from home to rendez-vous point, to metro. Once on the metro the air cleared of it's menace ever so slightly as we laughed and joked about how late we were going to be and how far from the stage we would end up.
Once arrived at Venissieux station, that frontier post of south-east Lyon and the badlands of fresh air and living space, the speed was once again felt as we searched in vain for the 39 bus that would take us to our final destination. The sign in the metro clearly indicated by means of a bright red arrow that the 39 was just outside the door, but with a little patients we eventually found it way up the other side of the station.
And who should be waiting there only The Yank and his buddy. Happy days, we'd all arrive together!

And so we promptly took the next bus that passed and ended up in the village of Feyzin. The venue ressembled more the local communtity centre then the rather grandious image it's name Le Centre Leonard de Vinci would inspire. We queued up and finished the beer The Yank had brought and entered.

It was a small venue, though well equipped. It had a bar. And not only a bar, but a bar where the pints (albeit in plastic glasses) where €3.50. This gig was getting off to a good start I thought, aswell as which Herself seemed to be getting on well with my friends. This is important as myself and The Yank, along with an unmentioned as yet third party, plan on starting a group so as to gain huge success and celebrity and eventually gain the trust of Bono from U2. This done, we shall invite him to a party after assuring him there will be an appropriate mix of third world development agencies and scantily clad nineteen year olds (our intel to date suggests he prefers a 1:99 ratio in favour of the girls, feminist that he is), where we will in fact drug him and surgicaly remove his larynx. Things are still a bit sketchy about what we will do with the larynx after that but I'm personally pushing for destroying it in the fires of Mount Mordor. We will have to wait and see the decision of the group.

It turned out we were a little ahead of schedule so with a few pints on board we entered the venue hall to fnd it... almost empty.
Sure the seats in the stands were full in the finest of French, sit-down traditions but we were allowed to mosey right on up to the stage front, which was at about bar counter height. The Yank and his buddy were extatic.

Man, you'd never get this close to the stage at an Andrew Bird concert in the States ! they exclaimed.

Yeah, and you wouldn't get free health care if you slipped in some beer and broke your arm either I thought (a little too smuggly for an Irishman it should be said, especially given present circumstances).
We watched the opening act which was pretty good, though all I remember is that the singers name was Laura something. It was that really nice (in my opinion) real American country sound, and wasn't I surprised when she said her good-byes with a strong English accent.

A short break and then came the main event. Mr. Andrew Bird himself (and his band of course). It was excellent. He is a guitarist and a violinist. He has a pedal which lets him record loops live. He plays his violin like a guitar knocking out an arpeggio, bop! one loop. He lays out a melody, sawn off from his violin by his bow, bop! second loop. The violin hurriedly replaced in it's open case on a chair beside him, he unslings his guitar that had previously been hanging limply like an unused archer's bow on his back and lays down a riff, bop! third loop. And so on and so forth until a beautiful wall of sound is built in front of the crowd's eyes and then in slides that pitch perfect, soft voice. Not to mention the whistling.
Yes, that's right, I said whistling. A fucking lost art it would seem, especially after hearing this guy.

Now I could try and describe the concert, the music, the songs, the ambiance but I'd be doomed to fail. They say a picture can tell a thousand words, but there has yet to be painted the picture that would sound one single note. So instead of a long winded and inevitably futile describtion of the Andrew Bird gig in the Epicerie Moderne, Centre Leonard de Vinci, Feyzin on the 28th day of April, 2009, here's an idea;
just imagine being closer, and it being a million times better.



Actually he looks a little scruffy there so here he is again on French TV

It was an amazing concert. Possibly the best I've ever been too. An incredibly talented artist in an intimate enviroment. We were spoiled that night.
Afterwards as we stressed once again about getting home we found that even though the last metro was at 00:20 there were no more buses to the station. We decided to walk, and perhaps call a taxi when we were inside the realms of affordability. The Yank and his buddy, emboldened by drink, stuck out the thumb.

You're wasting your time, I said to them, No-one stops in France.

And, of course, no sooner had I said my words then they arrived at God's ears. A beat up Mercedes station wagon, driven by a decent guy and headed to Lyon city cetre, pulled up.
A concert that was ment to be. Herself was as impressed as me and we had a wonderful night, so thanks a bunch Mr. Bird & Co.

When In Work, Do As The Workers

This morning I was sitting at my desk, drinking my coffee and opening my applications. As usual I was checking out some sites while waiting for my Mac's multi-coloured wheel of doom to stop turning*. Nothing too hectic, the RTE website (we pretend journalists have to stick together), a few french news web sites. The usual.

I left my navigator open and to one side (as I have two monitors) and opened the file I was working on. After a few minutes I noticed something was wrong.
The imported image didn't size up with my crop marks (basicaly the outline where the image will be cut after printing). A quick rummage in the folder produced the print out from which I had taken my measurements from and closer examination showed it wasn't exactly the correct size.

Bollox !.

A fucking amateur's mistake that would mean spending most of the morning re-inserting elements into a new file of the correct size.

Double bollox ! Ah well.

Further rummaging produced the file the client had sent. A quick crtl P (or that key with the Apple logo on it, as the case may be) brought up the print menu and I hit OK. Nothing happen for a moment and then the fucking wheel started a spinning again.

Piece of shit, I thought to myself.

This is the reason I keep the navigator open on my other monitor, for those occassions where my Mac throws a hissy fit. So I clicked back on the navigator window and decided to go to the site of a certain robber and started reading.

I finished reading the post at the top of the page, and threw a glance at my other monitor. The spinning wheel had gone away but nothing had been printed.

Oh, you're going to be like that today are you? I asked the computer through the power of Jedi mind communication.

Fuck you came the reply.

Sneering, I slammed a double quick print command and leaned back in my chair with a little smile of victory as I heard the big printer hum to life followed by the satisfying schlunk of the sheet of paper being spat out from it's inky bowels.

Ah ha

and then another sheet...

What?

...and another...

What the...?

...and another...

My eyes fell on the on the navigator window like impending doom.

Noooooooooo !!!!!!!!

...and another.....

Jumping up from my seat like my arse had been scalded and I ran to the printer.

Shit, bollox, fuck, no !!!

...and another...

I paniced. I started smacking buttons on the printer's little keypad like a demented accountant.

Stop fucking printing you piece of fucking shit I silently screamed at the machine.

What do you think you are, some kind of Jedi or something? came the reply.
That shit doesn't work on me you hairy prick !

Pleeeeeeeease...!!! was about the best I could retort.

I grabbed a sheet of paper from the ever increasing pile shooting cooly from the bastard printer. There, printed in high quality, was the one part, one part of what would turn out to be about thirty, of that robber bastards home page.

And still the machine was printing.

A quick glance around the room let me know that my hysterical actions had not gone unnoticed.

As luck would have it, Le Boss was also in the room, talking with one of my colleagues.

Wat is wiz all zis fuckink paper?

Ah.. I.. it's... uh... technical difficulties, with the... I mean my... uh computer... I hasarded.

Hmmm he said, which is french for yeah fucking right.

Nevermind he continued, we can use ze uhzer zide for printing roff werk. Leave zem beside ze printer.

Christ I hope none of these bastards can read english or I'll have some explaining to do next week.

And I place the blame squarely on that robber's shoulders. The prolific bastard.




*the multi-coloured spinning wheel is the Mac euivelant of the hour-glass on a PC, indicating that the processor is fully occupied.