Make Fairytale of New York Number 1 for Christmas

I bought my first song from iTunes today, Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and KirstyMacColl. I already had it on CD but I thought I'd do my bit to make it Number 1 for Christmas 2007.

The once great Christmas Number 1 title has meant nothing since XFactor made a mockery of the process. Now there is a campaign to get Fairytale of New York to the number 1 spot instead of the latest 1 month wonder from Simon Cowell. Who won Xfactor this year? I've already forgotten.

Merry CO2

Christmas lights at christmas increases the usage of electricity by 2% in Ireland. 2%???? Come on lads, you can do better than that, break out the extra 200M of exterior lights. It is Christmas after all. :-)



Ah, National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, my favourite Christmas movie ever :-)

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett has announced that he is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's. I tried to read one of his books once and didn't get into it but several of my friends love his Discworld books. For a man with such an imagination Alzheimer's seems like a truly cruel and harsh disease.

Beg Baby Beg

Why in the Ireland of 2007 are we allowing women to beg on the streets of our capital city with babies in a buggy or in their arms? At lunch time each day I pass a woman who I guess is in her early twenties sitting in exactly the same spot with a baby in a buggy. The last few days have been freezing cold so no responsible mother would have her young baby sitting on the side of the street for hours at end.

Why do we allow this to happen? Why in Celtic tiger Ireland do we not provide enough child welfare that children do not have to be used as begging props? Why do we do we not provide enough places in refuges to, at the very least, shelter every homeless woman with a baby? It's Christmas time and 2000 years ago a mother could find a stable to shelter in instead of sitting under a builders hoardings like today.

Finally if those services are provided and a mother still insists on placing her baby on the side of a busy street in freezing weather simply to guilt passers by into giving more money, why do the Gardai simply not take the baby into care and hand it to social services who can perhaps make sure it survives to see next summer?

Fake your own death for £25,000?

John Darwin, dubbed "the missing canoeist" has been charged by police with fraudulently obtained £25,000 from his life insurance when he faked his death 5 years ago. Apparently he lived secretly in his family home for 3 years then moved to Panama on a fake passport. You know, if he'd gone on the dole in the UK he'd probably have made more over the 5 years and at the very least have been able to wander down to the shops or the pub if he was bored. If it's true he's some muppet.

Truffle

What does a truffle taste like? I mean the proper ones that people spend $330,000 for. Must be something special, no sarcasm intended, I'm genuinely curious.

[via Boing Boing]

Turner Prize Bear

A 154-minute video of a man dressed as a bear has won the Turner Prize for Mark Wallinger. They claim he really won it for another work called State Britain, which he probably did, but to most of us in the general public a man dressed as a bear just won one of the biggest prize in art.