Comedy Countdown

08-02-2010
As of today there are just over seven days until the start of the contest being ran by Comedy Dublin. As of today I still don't have my opening joke ready.

This is not good.

Too much stuff has been on since I signed up for the contest to allow me carve out some time to write the material. Let alone practice the material. Plus with the migraines appearing most of last week and destroying my normal daily word targets I haven't exactly had a lot of spare time to play with anyway.

Going to have to change all of that this week and just allocate some time every night to drilling the set into my head.

If only there existed some sort of "comedy drill" (patent pending) so that you didn't have to learn comedy once you wrote it. Just attached the "material bit" to the drill and bored it straight into your brain.

Oh if only.

Then again I still have to get told what heat I am actually in. Not much point wondering and worrying over not knowing your material if you don't know when said material needs to be ready for. I am sort of hoping for a slot a week after the 16th of Feb, at the earliest. That way I should have more than enough time to practice the set, fine tune it and modify it as needed.

Not to mention come up with a new opening joke.

Ah it all reminds me of when I first started this stand-up lark. Signing up for something without any material even written.

Good to see I learn from my mistakes.

Blue_jester


Lost Words

07-02-2010
It has been a bad week for keeping my word target. Between trips home to the ladyfriend's home town, parental units meeting for the first time, parties, migraines, work and stuff on during the week I have literally had no time to do anything.

I haven't even written the cold-open for my new comedy set and that means my contest material is still not fully finished and ready to happen yet.

But yes, the word count has officially been left out in the cold this week. Aside from one day I have missed all six targets. Today is something of a write off as well, because as usual I have a Sunday Migraine.

So the Sunday Migraine has caused me to miss another target, meaning I have to make sure that I get back on track tomorrow. Stupid not being a writer full time. Why couldn't I be a full time writer?

The upside is that while in my migraine induced state I did manage to get a new Roommate Chronicle up on the site, it's in the usual spot. Go have a look.

Blue_jester


Grumpy Granger's

06-02-2010
It would seem that in this day and age certain publicans seem to think that manners are something that happen to other people and unless you are paying them for a pint they don't need to treat you with anything less than contempt.

See today I went to the Ireland v Italy opening match of the 2010 Six Nations with the lady friend as I mentioned yesterday was going to happen. It was a pretty awesome experience (despite watching rugby for five years I have never gone to a match) and even though the second half was a poor game rugby wise overall it was a great match to watch. Really enjoyed it. The crowd, the songs, the cheers, the boos, the shouts at how blind the ref was. All brilliant.

The lady friend's auntie and young cousin were also coming down to watch the match and had rang ahead the day before to see if we wanted to get breakfast together and head to the game at the same time. Being nice folks that we are a plan was formed and off we went.

We met the auntie and kid at the train station then decided to go and find some place that had breakfast still on the go. I made the mistake of thinking that Granger's beside the train station did an all day breakfast, but it turns out that the stop at noon. However as we walked in the door it had literally just gone twelve and the lady decided to ask the guy behind the counter if the breakfast had fully stopped.

He laughed at her and said it had in something coming close to condescending and then moved on to deal with the next customer.

We four had a quick yap and figured why not stay and get some pub grub by way of breakfast/lunch. The lady once again asked the man about getting a menu to order our meals from. Again the laugh and he said that we couldn't order food for the area we were sitting in and had to move into the next room.

This room was full.

By now we were all figuring that it was time to move but the lady spoke with a waitress and she said that we could have our food wherever and to sit down and she would bring us menus.

Menus came, we ordered, life was good.

Now, the place was fairly busy and the poor waitress appeared to be the only one handling food stuff because she was running around and sweating. However after about an hour we had no sign of our food coming at all and time was not on our side if we were to make it to the match before kick off.

The lady, having work in restaurants before, decided to give the girl a break and just asked her politely as she passed about our order.

The girl was flustered that she hadn't brought it out, said there had been a small mix up and that it was being prepared now.

Two minutes later the ignorant (for there is no other way to describe him) barman comes to our table.

"Well folks, there has been a mix up with your order. This is table three and there is a table three in there as well and your order went there. So you can either cancel it or we can start to cook it now."

Now. I was thinking, what are the chances that both tables had four people at them and that both tables ordered the exact same meals? Four people four meals? That is some crazy maths to work out the probability of it occurring (like 16 in a million) but fair enough. However we wouldn't be able to wait for the meal to be made from scratch, have time to eat it, and still be on the train for the kick off. So we explained that to him. This didn't seem to please him so I just said.

"I think we will have to cancel it if we are to get to the match on time."

Did he apologise for the mix up? Did he offer to let our bill for drinks go unpaid? Did he fuck! He just stood up and walked away like a spoilt child.

"Fine!"

And off he goes without another word spoken.

So we left without paying for the drinks. Serves the prick right if you ask me. Manners, a use of the word "sorry" for making us wait. But nothing of the sort. Basically we had offended him by having to catch a train that he was making us late for in the first place.

So if you are ever in Dublin city and walk past Granger's pub at the bottom of Tabolt Street do yourself a favour and keep on walking in search of a much friendly pub down the road.

Since this website can appear at the top of a google search I am going to figure that my little rant will appear to somebody someday searching about that pub. Take heed of what I just said, they are rude in there.

Blue_jester


30 K.P.H. Of Stupidity

05-02-2010
It's Friday.

The approach of the weekend.

I get to go to the opening match of the Six Nations tomorrow due to the lady friend getting me tickets for Christmas. Good times are in my future.

So why not have an early rant before diving into the mountain of work? Why not, I hear you say.

I was going to rant about "Avatar", which I saw in 3D last night, but I also wanted to rant about the new speed limit within the city and I figured I would split those into two separate rants. So this one will be about the speed limit of stupidity.

See recently the speed limit in Dublin City was changed from what it was to a max of 30 K.P.H. This starts on the very edge of the city and is in effect throughout the whole city up to the docks. The only roads not effected are the South and North circular roads which make the map look nice and pretty since it means there is a big circle containing the stupidity within Dublin City Centre.

The whole concept just smells of a bunch of dumb bastards not thinking things through and just going with whatever the hell they want.

For a start it is being touted as a limit that will make the roads safer for cyclists.

You know what would make the roads safer for cyclists? If they fucking obeyed the rules of the road. I can't count the amount of times I have been driving and stopped at a red light, only to see a person on a bike cycle straight through the light and shout swear words at the drivers who have the right of way and beep at him. Plus we all remember my Christmas-time rant about the cyclist who decided to annoy me as I crossed at a pedestrian crossing.

Now, I am never one to paint one class or section of people with the same brush just because of a few bad eggs. But in this particular basket you have to look really hard to find the good eggs.

Every cyclist I have seen on the road seems to think that the lights are for the cars only and don't give a damn about breaking them, thus causing problems that they later blame the cars on. If you get hit by a bus because you broke a red light you are at fault. If a car got hit by a bus after it broke a red light the car is at fault. This is basically the same as saying: "You're only picking on me because I am black!". Stupidity and disregard for the rules is not based on anything other than stupidly disregarding rules.

But the stupidity of the speed limit is more than this.

It is damn hard to make you car drive at 30 (which is just over 18 miles per hour in the old maths) because the pressure of your foot alone will bring it up to 35 without you so much as breaking a sweat. Driving home from the cinema last night I found myself watching the damn needle more than the road and was doing 40 every single time without noticing.

And 40 isn't even that fast.

I pointed this out to the lady friend and she laughed because the car was going slow.

So if every driver is now going to be watching the needle it will make for worse, not better, driving because of all the breaking that will be needed to maintain the new limit.

Not to mention the increase in road rage. I was overtaken last night four times by people because I was doing the speed limit. You throw a city into rush hour and see how long that lasts.

Rush hour of course being another hilarious element of this plan. Since cars barely move during rush hour anyway, forcing them to go at no more than 30 will make rush hour last longer, thus causing more congestion in the city.

More congestion means more emissions and cars can't really operate at 30 in a decent gear so that means yet more emissions and wear and tear on the car. Pretty soon you will have green house gases to worry about because everyone is obeying (or at least trying to) the speed limit.

There is of course the other side of the plan, the lack of traffic planning on the part of the politicians that brought this limit into law. Cities the world over use traffic lights to regulate the flow of cars at any given point in time. This is mostly an automated system, where the lights have been set to a given sequence based on how busy the street is and how keeping cars at one location will allow for more cars to move at another location. Basically it is very complicated.

One thing that Dublin's wise men have never seemed to take into account is how this traffic flow needs to be studied before implementing things. Streets become one way over night, Stephen's Green becomes a Luas haven. But they never look at the knock-on effect before hand. They need stop and see if what they want to implement will have a knock-on effect on the other side of the city. Now with a speed limit of 30 they will see more areas having cars build up because the lights have been set to use one sequence based on the old speed limit.

In lay-man's terms they would have to re-sequence the entire city grid of traffic lights to work based on the new speed limit to avoid traffic chaos. Which they haven't and probably haven't even realised they need to.

Pretty much they have screwed the city entirely. There is no public transport network worth speaking of to use as an alternative and no plans to provide/improve one so people have to drive. The buses have to obey this 30 limit as well, which means that even if a person did want to take the bus there is no benefit to it now. Retailers all over the city are crying out because of massive drops in trade. The Bus Corridor (a section of Dublin city off limit to cars in the morning and evening rush hour periods) has already caused drops in sales. Now if it takes twice as long to drive into town to shop you will see more retailers shut shop forever because who wants the hassle of moving slower than an O.A.P. in one of their buggies to buy some clothes and shoes? Ergo less customers.

The Government said in the last Budget that they want to get people spending again. Yet they keep coming up with more and more plans to make people not want to come into the city to spend.

All so a few cyclists with the mentality of a Muslim Extremist can break red lights.

The mind, she boggles.

Blue_jester