Tag: ireland

A tiny bit of snow, and Irish society goes racing downhill

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1080° Avalanche (2003)

Let me tell you, there’s nowhere in the world more unprepared for snow than Ireland. I do mean that, because can you name a country that could be worse for extreme weather? If we go around the houses – Canada and to a lesser extent the United States expect snow to occur.

Perhaps the southern States get blindsided by a blizzard, but let’s face it, they’re not prepared for the wild winds that’ll uproot their entire houses, either. If it snowed in Central or South America, it’d melt pretty quickly. And just because some penguins abound the tips of South Africa, it doesn’t mean any of the continent ever becomes draped in white baize.

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The name’s Burkey… Heathen Burkey

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GoldenEye 007 (1997)

There seems to be a strange phenomenon in life whereby the most major and far-reaching decisions tend to be left in the lap of children, while the decisions made by adults are of no consequence at all, or you never had that much agency in the first place. You might think that marriage, or buying a house are earth-moving decisions on your part. But it’s society that makes this decision for you, if you’re really being honest with yourself.

That momentous decision to have kids? Oh come on, how many of us were accidents? Even if you’re too careful for accidents, and you want to reproduce, then it’s still not your decision, that’s your genes acting on your behalf. And as you get older, it’s not like you’ll be the one deciding when you’re going to shuffle off to a home, which one you’ll even go to, and when to pull the plug at the end of it all. It seems to me that the older you get, the less you get to decide.

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Housing recommendations, courtesy of Pierce Brosnan’s Taffin

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Taffin

Taffin (1988)

I had always wondered how easy or difficult it would be to make a film in Ireland. You don’t exactly have the clout or backing of Hollywood, Bollywood or even Pinewood Studios. Your backdrops are most likely going to be fields, and your extras will be cows and sheep. On your budget of zero, even Rawhead Rex won’t answer your casting manager’s calls. The typical Irish accent is going to be far too squeaky for camera, and two of our biggest acting exports are Mrs. Brown’s Boys and Fair City, which says it all. Worse than that, Glenroe is the closest we’ve gotten to a look at the gritty realism of rural Ireland.

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Here in Ireland, we have the not so beautiful Gaelic games

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gaelic games football logo

Gaelic Games Football (2005)

Whenever people laugh at me for buying Ashes Cricket for the PS3, I’m quick to remind them that my plight is much worse than that, for I own Gaelic Games Football for the PlayStation 2. The PS2 by my conservative estimate has around 400,000 games in its library. I don’t know how any mad fool could ever hope to collect each and every single one of them, and you can be sure that there are plenty of people out there with more money than sense attempting to do exactly that. FIFAs 2001 through 2014 in a row must look great on the shelves I suppose. My takeaway from all this is that game development for the PS2 must have been as easy to get into and as accessible as fetish pornography, and the unfortunate end result of this is that some Irish programmers out there got on the turps and decided it was a great idea to make a Gaelic Football game.

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You can’t be a tough guy until you’ve walked a steady pace down Dublin’s Talbot Street

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streets of rage

Streets of Rage (1991) NOTX

When I see tourists around Dublin city I am left dumbfounded. Now, I’m not going to hit you with all the self-loathing and culture cringe that often occurs when someone talks negatively about their country. But what exactly are these tourists doing? If someone asked me for Dublin city recommendations, I could hardly even give them the ideal pub or club to go to, because I don’t know any myself. I do know some great Spars and Subways. A CEX or two. I know some of the bus-stops. I even know where there is a 24 hour library. But what do the Germans and Japanese think to themselves when they come here? Apart from “Das golly-gosh Hilda, this place is sehr expensive.”

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