The Best Bits of my last Week or so

Busy few weeks! Little time to blog, but here are a few bits and pieces that I found along the way.

Within days of endorsing some sceptical podcasts, I find a toilet that empties into a sceptic tank:

"I'm sceptical that this is natural waste, so I'm going to back up into the sinks now"

While out in Limerick City (for the first time in a long time) I found something oddly reminiscent of the religious graffiti I tracked for a few months years over the country a few years ago. Has the intrepid vandal moved onto a new uplifting message with less? Forensic analysis to follow at a later date:

Accidentally cut off a bit - it reads: "Hope - The unconscious mind works it out - Sleep on it"

Limerick Band Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters released a fantastic new album last week, and I finally got to listen to it uninterrupted. Well worth a purchase, if you're into solid rock with a menacing vibe [Amazon Link].

Here's the latest single, Hatch Sixteen, which I've yet to decide is a paean or condemnation of Limerick City.

Flyer Foul-Ups, and other distractions

For some reason, having a phone on me at all times just means I end up taking pictures of weird stuff, rarely sharing it with anyone unless I can find a suitable occasion.

I've designed a few flyers in my day. Not particularly good ones mind, but I always endeavour to get the basics right - I may not have the flashiest artwork, but at least I'm consistent. Unlike this flyer advertising additional downloadable content for Mafia II on the PS3:

Which is it, flyer? The 'Made Man' or 'Man Made' pack? While both are phrases used in the English language, it puzzles me that something this obvious slipped through.

I'll get to the next flyer after I clear out some more weird stuff from my phone:

On the impulse buy rack at a grocery store in the US: a "Kid-Pleasing" TV Series. How do you please kids? Suggestive tail pulling, naturally

They have ORANGE Cadbury's Creme Eggs in the US. Can somebody get me a freaking green card already?

Can't afford Penguin bars but refuse to buy a non-aquatic themed equivalent? Seal bars are available at your local Lidl to fill this gap in the market

Yanks covers their cars in moronic Jesus-propaganda to win good graces. "Elect Jesus"? "Jesus Christ - He's the Real King" in Coca-Cola font? Who comes up with this crap and sells it for $9.99? And how can I get on this bandwagon?

Okay, back on topic - the other flyer I want to share is from Harvey Norman. Remember Harvey Norman? Here's a hint - they're conniving, bait'n'switching sons-a-bitches. Let's have a look at their latest, 'Hardly Normal' flyer:

Holy balls! A Nintendo 3DS for €129! I'll be there right away! Hang on a tick - the picture is of the Nintendo 3DS, but the accompanying text (and logo) reads Nintendo DSi Console. This is an obscene screw up, and when part of your business practices involves advertising deals in print that aren't available in store, you don't get the benefit of the doubt on this one, Norman. From now on, I'm referring to such promotional material from your company as 'liars'. Heh-heh.

And thus concludes today's lesson on blogging for people with dull lives. Don't have anything interesting to say? Post some pictures and make some words about them!

What to expect when you're expectorating

Warning! This blog entry features talk of bodily functions. Ye be warned.

"Only In America"

I have a habit of taking pictures of peculiar things that I happen across in my everyday life. Sometimes they get used on the blog, sometimes they sit on the computer for months until I decide to do a photo-dump.

What I'm posting now are some oddities encountered whilst on (United States of) American soil, in no particular order at all.

Commencing dump...

Sign reads "Experience Church Online!" Man - that exclamation point almost caught me out. 

Gum Tree at Grand Canyon. Someone put their gum on it, then dozens followed suit. Gross. But kinda neat.

Bear-proof bins at the Grand Canyon

The Yankification of Sully

As far back as I can recall, my sense of fashion has been outsourced to whatever woman is willing to take the job. Throughout my schooling, the process of acquiring new clothes involved opening the wardrobe and seeing what duds my mother had placed within.

When I moved out of home and started college, I suffered through a turbulent few months of fashion faux-pas as my loose-fitting fleece tops gave the impression that I was a middle-aged insurance salesman trying to hang out with college kids. I limped along until I moved to Belgium, where I acquired a girlfriend who set about making me fit in with my sexy European counterparts.

When I moved to Pittsburgh, I sufferred through a turbulent few months of fashion faux-pas as my tight-fitting European threads gave the impression that I was a hip, young homosexual. I acquired a girlfriend who set about making me fit in with my tubby Yankee doodle counterparts.

When I look back on pictures from these different eras, it seems to me that it's not just the clothes, the environments, and the attractiveness of those around me that change, but also my very essence. The fat, greedy, stupid Irish boy grows into a worldly, svelte European who wishes to share with his fellow man. That European then grows into a fat, stupid wannabe-yank man.

Think I'm being harsh? See for yourself:

Not to worry, despite my increasing grotesqueness, my narcissism is still powerful enough to create gifs of my evolving visage (not to mention the .jpg alternative for those not able to view the gif).

Genital arrangement & swearing: My TSA Abuse Story

The TSA agent stepped into my personal space, pushing his face against mine as I tried to undo my belt buckle, his seething voice raising into a roar:

"You're Irish, but you speak German? WHAT THE FUCK? EXPLAIN YOURSELF"

At 6"8 he towered above me, his red veiny face pulsating with rage as he looked down on me. 

"Get into the fucking scanner"

I gingerly took a few steps forward and --- y'know what, dear reader? I'm too close to this story, and I'm sick of reading blogs where the author's emotional bias creeps into the facts, so I'm going to defer to an omniscient narrator for this post and start over.

-------------------

Sully had always fancied himself as an excellent traveller. A terrible cook, a mediocre boyfriend, but an excellent traveller. A seasoned veteran of airports, delays, reschedules and lost baggage, he made a point of maintaining a cheerful disposition in the face of any adversity, because that's what excellent travellers do. He offerred chirpy pleasantries and generously broad smiles to all airport personnel, and was always quick on the draw with the passport stashed in his back-right pocket, or the boarding pass in his back-left.

Even when his spirits were low, as they were on this day, the ritual of navigating his way through an airport towards the plane was an exciting adventure, mostly because he got to condescend to all the bad travellers who weren't as capable as he was. He tutted under his breath at those who set off metal detectors with obviously metallic apparel, mentally chastised those who made a fuss of themselves for no good reason, and generally felt superior to those who found the rigors of security theatre stressful.

Being the good traveller that he was, Sully was four hours early for his afternoon flight out of O'Hare airport. After checking in his luggage, he was left with only three hours and fifty-four minutes to locate his gate, so he set off towards the security checkpoint to start on this endeavour.

The queuing lane up to passport control was long, but empty, causing the TSA operative manning the station some mirth as she watched Sully shuffle left-to-right through the ropes, doing a great deal of walking but only barely inching towards her, all the while peering at her self-consciously out of her peripheral vision. She was a middle-aged blonde who spoke with a drawl that Sully thought didn't belong in Chicago, and slumped in her chair in a fashion that reflected the sleepy atmosphere of the entire airport that morning.

As she glanced at Sully's passport, he looked ahead. There was a TSA agent about the same age and build as him strutting around, looking about to see if he could do anything. Despite the low traffic at the security checkpoint, the only open lane to go through the metal detector was backed up beyond the conveyor belt, and didn't seem to be moving at all. Just to the right, there was a longer queue of airport personnel who were going through the full-body scanners at a much quicker rate.

As he had yet to have any first-hand experience of the backscatter Xrays, Sully was disappointed to note the sign saying "Employees only" in front of it. The passport-controller must have been reading his mind, or his face:

"Okay, you're good to go. You can step to the right through the body-scanners if you want - it's an employee lane, but you'll be fine."

Sully offerred his thanks, but was cut off by the strutting, younger TSA agent who approached the desk, and slowly enunciated:

"Das ist sehr langweilig."

The passport-agent furrowed her brow at him.

"What?"

Her confusion was tangible. He bopped on the spot, thoroughly enjoying himself

"Oh yeah. Sie sprechen kein Deutsch"

The words hung in the air for a moment, then she turned towards Sully with a quizzical look.

Forgetting where he was, Sully volunteered his assistance.

"He said he's bored. In German. And he's teasing you for not speaking it".

After seeing how his face had dropped, she broke out into laughter, as did the passengers around Sully.

He had stopped bopping on the spot.

"That's true, this is boring, but I didn't want the passengers to hear it!"

He chewed on his words and glared at Sully, but then let out a hearty chuckle to show that there were no hard feelings, then bopped back over towards the full body scanner.

Sully felt a little ashamed as he made his way towards the scanner. Had he got so caught up in American gregariousness that he had overstepped its bounds? His hometown was a place where people wouldn't approach one another to ask the time, let alone discomfit a stranger tasked with keeping people safe.

As he emptied his pockets into the plastic tray, he paused at his passport. Once, when flying out of Pittsburgh, a TSA agent chastised him for carrying it through the metal detector. A month later, at the same checkpoint, a TSA agent asked him for his passport as he stepped through the metal-detector. To avoid doing the wrong thing, he held up his passport at the German-speaking agent and asked if he should put it in the machine.

The response was theatrical: "You're from Ireland, but you speak German?" He stepped in close and lowered his voice so no one else would hear. "What the fuck, man!"

The two strangers chuckled, and Sully was told to keep it with him at all times.

"So what part are you from?"

"Limerick," - Sully held off for any signs of recognition "the south-west."

"No way! I'm from Tipperary" he said, struggling to render the county's name with his American mouth. Possibly reading Sully's reaction, a big smile of knowing self-parody spread across his face.

"Well, kind of. You know what I mean!"

It was Sully's turn to use the scanner, the next TSA agent in the chain beckoned and cut short the chat.

Sully's new friend patted on the arm and wished him well: "Have a good one, man". It occurred to him that he meant it.

Sully assumed the position inside the scanner. Legs spread, arms overheard, it was a freeze-frame of a jumping jack, Sully thought, or at least, that's what his years-old memory of a jumping-jack told him. Sully straightened his back, sucked in his gut, and shook his genitals into a more presentable arrangement out of sympathy for the imagined agent whose morning coffee had surely been ruined by the wretched samples of humankind being delivered to his monitor.

The operator implored Sully to hold still. The machine made a slight whirring sound. Sully was conscious of his trembling hands so he held his breath. The whirring stopped and Sully was ushered out.

He stepped forward where a male and female TSA agent were blocking access to the collection end of the conveyor belt.

"Stand over there, keep an eye on your stuff" the male TSA agent said.

Sully walked into the V-shape that the filtering-ropes were arranged into, and placed his feet over the yellow outlines on the rubber mat, turning his back on the TSA agents. He braced himself for some feeling up. Thoughts raced through his head. What in or on my body could be mistaken for a weapon? Had my new friend set me up? How long does a full-cavity search take? I only have three hours and forty minutes to make this flight.

Thirty seconds later, Sully's train of thought was disrupted by the female TSA agent.

"Uh, sir, would you like to step through and collect your stuff?"

She had removed the barrier. Of course! The delay was just the xrays being processed, Sully realized.

Sully gathered his bits and went about his day, pleased with how breezy getting through security had been, and he made a note to blog about the TSA in a positive fashion to offset the torrents of abuse they receive online.

Little did Sully realize that nobody gives a shit about his blog.

The Silver Lining

It doesn’t happen too often, but every now and again, I do something remarkable. The kinds of things that would be routine for over-achievers are novel for occasional-achievers like me, so I try to enjoy the satisfaction for as long as I can.

One of the fastest ways to spoil my enjoyment of an accomplishment is to get my mother to weigh in on it. Try it sometime. Next time you’re in the same room as my mother and me, ask me about something cool I’ve done and see what happens.

In every example from recent memory, the conversation goes something like this.

Well wisher: “I hear you graduated with a first class honours degree, how did you manage that?”

Sully: “Well...”

Mother: “I was down on bended knee!”

Well wisher: “Eh?”

Mother: “I was praying for him the whole time. His exams started at eleven, so I’d start praying at five to-”

Sully: “My exams started at 9am this year-“

Mother: “And I wouldn’t stop praying until I knew he was finished”

Sully: “Well, actually, there was a lot of project work in addition to--“

Mother:  “Our Lady of the Wayside, she hasn’t let you down yet”

Well wisher: “Our Lady of the Wayside? What’s that?”

Mother: “It’s a prayer for students and young people. It’s done wonders for all my lads--”

Sully: “But, younger Sully failed out of college.”

Mother: “Shush – that was the best thing that could have happened to him.”

Sully: “He also failed his driving test three times.”

Mother: “And he never gave up! Our Lady of the Wayside! It’s wonderful!”

Yes, my mother believes in intercessory prayer, and petitions me ceaselessly to integrate the pointless exercise – actively trying to distract me away from preparing for whatever it is I’m trying to accomplish.

At the last family gathering, one of the observers of this ritual was a priest. After pithily remarking that her favoured prayer “must be a traveller’s prayer”, he nodded sympathetically when I bemoaned her lack of recognition for all the hard work and preparation that brought about the spoils of victory.

Priests will admit what my mother won’t. Prayer doesn’t get work done. Work gets work done. If you pray for something (like my younger brother passing his exams and staying in college) and don’t get your way, you shouldn’t be able to rationalize it by saying that the actual outcome was better anyhow. If your prayers won’t change the outcome, why continue to waste your time? The system lacks a consistent inner-logic.

Last week, I interviewed for a (pretty cool) job. I poured countless hours of effort into preparing, and my mother insisted on ‘chipping in’ herself. She told everybody who’d listen about her efforts on my behalf, and how she “had a feeling” that I was going to get it. I didn’t get the job, but the disappointment was immediately allayed by the recognition that Our Lady of the Wayside had let me down. A-ha!

Of course, this was one of those rare instances where it sucks to be right.

At times, I wish I could live in her fantasy-world. My mother thinks that she has beaten the system. She has discovered a prayer that will make your wildest-dreams come true, and if they don’t, you didn’t really want them to come true anyhow.

No amount of reasonable prompts and suggestions will cause her to reflect critically on her little racket with the man upstairs, but I keep prodding, mostly because she makes for a fascinating case study.

A Pavlovian Response

While the efficacy to date has been questionable, my girlfriend's ongoing attempts to cultivate me into a fully-functional, socially-fluent human being show little signs of fatigue.

Over the past four years, we have logged a considerable amount of time watching films together, and yet, I'm still not sure what to do during those moments when her face crunches up and her eyes emit a salty discharge.

Derisive comments, for example, don't really work. We were watching Marley and Me at the cinema. The dog is the emotional vehicle in the film. The dog gets sick. It's sad. Then, (SPOILERS!) the dog dies. The characters on screen cry, and so do the estrogen-fuelled audience members. To make her feel better, I leaned into her ear and whispered "Well, there's a surprise!". To show that she appreciated my attempt to make her feel better, she punched my arm.

Now, if you're thinking "Sully my boy, you shouldn't be so confrontational", I'd say you're onto something. At least I would, had I not tried a gentler approach some months previous. We were watching I Am Legend at the cinema. It's a crap movie with crap CGI and a crap premise. Will Smith is craply moping around some strikingly empty metropolitan areas with his dog. The dog is his only friend, and the only semblance of his past life, before he lost (SPOILERS!) his wife and daughter. The dog becomes a zombie-dog and attacks the Fresh Prince, but doesn't survive the encounter. Will Smith has killed his only friend and reminder of a normal life, and is sad. He weeps in a manly fashion. I'm so busy scoffing that I don't realize my hot date is blubbering until a big ol' teardrop hits my hand. Thinking fast, I decide that drawing attention to a ludicrous emotional reaction to a terrible film is the best approach. I lean into her and ask her "What the hell are you doing?" She thumps me.

My problem isn't that I'm emotionally crippled, it's that I can't suspend my disbelief. Moments likely to cause her to choke up and remark "that's so sad" will make me think "that's an interesting technique to evoke emotion". More often than not, the techniques are hackneyed and convey little power, but my girlfriend, so filled is she with the milk o' human kindness will have a cry at them anyway.

I could keep you all day with examples of my emotional-callousness being rewarded with indolent bursts of violence, but not, dear reader, forever. I managed to break the cycle, and I owe it in part to Pixar.

We were watching Up (a quality film, by anyone's metric) on a tiny TV with fuzzy sound in her living room. Despite the technical limitations of the screening, it was a slice of heaven to be with her on the couch, watching a film we had put off watching until the other was around with our bodies arranged into that just-right comfort you don't want to disturb lest you can't recreate it.

During the opening montage in which we observe a young boy and girl become friends, fall in love, grow old together, and eventually part ways due to pesky mortality, it occurred to me that this family-friendly cartoon had put together a segment more engaging and profound than any film in recent memory. We both watched, rapt, and as it drew into the inevitable silent climax, my mind was processing what I had seen - the music, the lighting, the animation - was the flexibility of the medium a major advantage in this segment? My mind was buzzing with excitement. I looked down at her, as she clung onto my arm, and saw that she was, unsurprisingly, in bits.

She looked up to meet my gaze, bewitching me with those beautiful brown eyes, magnified by glassy tears. It was a beautiful moment.

I didn't want to fuck it up. But I had to give her some reaction! I pushed out my lower lip into a pout to register my sadness for the fake cartoon-people on the telly.

She pulled herself upright and gave me a little peck on the cheek. We settled back into our nook and enjoyed the rest of the film. It was pure heaven.

Since that moment many months ago, I've been repeating the habit of pouting during sad parts in films to win positive reenforcement for displaying my emotional intelligence. I didn't realize that I had made this a habit until my last plane journey. Whilst watching a heartstring-tugging scene in the (2010) Karate Kid on a 4" screen, I pushed my lower lip forward and held it there until the scene ended. Well I would have, if the air-hostess hadn't come along first, looked at me funny, and asked "Chicken or Pasta?"

*Artist's Impression

Misadventures in Small Talk: An Indecent Proposal

I indulge in small talk every so often. I’m not very good at it, but I give it a try.

[Source]

I was at work, dealing with enquiries with a normal looking guy. The conversation ended on a cheerful note, but he didn't leave. He was hesitating. Then he said the weirdest thing:

“Can I quickly pitch something to you?”

I looked at him sideways, he felt the need to lubricate his pitch.

“It will only take two minutes”

Okay, I’ll listen to your pitch, hombre.

I nodded.

“Have you heard of My Shopping Genie?”

Blank look from yours truly.

“Okay, it’s this GREAT application for comparing prices online-”

A dozen price-sharing websites went through my head. None of them had 'My Shopping Genie' in the title. I grunted at him to show that I understood.

“- and it’s absolutely exploding in popularity right now.”

My sideways look was now at about 45 degrees.

“It will be bigger than Google in a few months at the rate it’s going”

My head was now spinning around like a propeller from his ejaculation. Unperturbed, he continued:

“It’s this thing that you can use to make money. I just started making money on it now because I signed up for it three weeks ago-”

I started to look around for something else, some reason to leave. Hopefully there’s a fire. He continued:

“You can make so much money on it -"

Drat. No fire. Maybe I could start a fire...

"-You just need to get people underneath you.”

Hang on a tick, did he just say "get people underneath you"?

“There’s a woman above me, a stay at home Mom -“

Did he just say “a woman above me?”

“She has two kids. She looks after them, she does some things on the computer, she makes €2,000 a week. It’s incredible.”

What the hell is he talking about? And why is he talking so quickly?

“I need to do what she’s doing so I can make that kind of money-“

I thought this dude was recommending some software. What the hell is going on?

“- so do you think that you’d be interested in signing up and taking part?”

Silence.

Oh yeah. That’s right. It’s my turn to talk:

“Sure. What’s the URL again: My Sales Genie dot eye eee?”

“Shopping Genie”

“My Shopping Genie dot eye eee?”

“My Shopping Genie dot eye eee.”

“Okay, I’ll look into it, thanks.”

“No, don’t just go to that site, go to this one”

He handed me a torn up slip of paper with the URL and a seven digit code.

"I'll look into it later"

Mercifully, he left. I reflected on what had just happened:

"I'm pretty sure that this guy is involved in a pyramid scheme" I said to myself.

"I should look into this, it might make for an interesting blog entry..."

A meme worth sharing

Memes are a fascinating subject. Observing these discrete units of behavior patterns, practices, or even products makes me wonder about who started them, and the kind of people who propagated them.

Top ten lists. Lolcat pictures. Folding toilet paper in hotel toilets so you know the cleaner has been in. All memes that have stood the test of time, and will likely exist as long as their respective mediums do.

All these memes pale in comparison to what I witnessed a few weeks ago.

After a few weeks away from home, I showed up with my girlfriend in tow. Had this been a normal visit, I would have tried to ensure that the house was reasonably clean to hide from her the level of squalor in which I am willing to live, but on this visit, I was completely at the mercy of my housemates' lax sense of sanitation. The sense of trepidation in stopping by was heightened by her announcement that she wished to use the "restroom".

Happily, on this occasion, the communal areas of our residence indicated that ours was not a fetid shithole. All the same, I warned my missus that I wanted to check the toilet before I let her proceed.

I had figured that the upstairs bathroom would be in the best shape, but hadn't anticipated the extent of the moulting season that one of my housemates was going through. After a few minutes of wrestling dark scraggly hairs into drains and scrubbing week-old skidmarks off the porcelain, the lavatory was again safe for human operation.

My ladyfriend was waiting patiently downstairs, standing in the middle of the kitchen - as if to avoid touching anything. I told her the coast was clear. She told me that while I was upstairs, she checked the downstairs toliet.

"You're out of toilet paper"

I poked my head into the outhouse under the stairs. The toilet lid was down, and the cardboard core of an empty roll of toilet paper was perched atop it.

I cocked my head sideways.

"Huh." I exhaled.

"Oh yeah, I put the empty roll on because I didn't want anybody to-"

I grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her a little

"You did this? You put the roll on the lid?"

"Well yeah - I didn't want anybody to start and then realize-"

"That's genius!"

"Well, it would be a shame if somebody-"

"Where did you see this?"

"What, putting the roll on the lid? I dunno, I just did it now."

"That's incredible… It's genius."

"Darling…"

"It sends a clear message, and it obstructs the would-be-user from even using the toilet…"

"Honey…"

"Even a total fool wouldn't be able to misinterpret this. It's so simple!"

"Sweetheart"

"It's averting potential toilet-disasters! Sparing the desperate use of hand-towels -"

"HEY!"

"Sorry. What's up?"

"Can you let go now? I have to use the restroom"


Stupid meme that. 'Restroom'. Does anybody rest in there? No! I could live with 'relief-room', or even 'evacuation-room', but 'restroom', that's a meme I cannot abide.

Amazon - We Sell Book's

On a recent trip to Barnes & Noble, my ladyfriend and I got an impressive demo of the Nook, and we were both quite taken by the idea of an e-book reader. She's since dropped some blatant hints about her desire to have one, so I've decided to start paying attention to this burgeoning gadget-category.

After a few weeks of seeing Nooks and Kindles at every turn (it was a few weeks full of airport departure lounges, hotel lobbies, and cafés) I'm starting to believe that e-books are in fact 'the future'.

As soon as I decided to start paying attention to the technology, Amazon unveiled their newest iteration of the Kindle, so I decided to check out the official video detailing why it was worth the cash. It's a fairly typical video for this type of product: the main points appear as text on screen as a soothing male voice dishes out the impressive facts, and the Kindle pirouettes around on screen flirtatiously from different angles. Sadly, I was only able to enjoy this gadget-porn for about 78 seconds before an unwelcome visitor presented itself to me:

Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!

Begone, misplaced apostrophe! You don't belong here! You'd think that the largest purveyor of the written-word in the world would know where to put a shagging inverted-comma, right?

Of course they do:

These are the kind of silly mistakes that pedants like me use as excuses to ruin Christmasses. (Ask my girlfriend about the year when she really wanted an iPod, and ended up with a Sansa instead)

(Okay, maybe these are the kind of silly mistakes that pedants like me use to make themselves feel smarter than a huge corporation that earns more in one hour of operation than they will in their entire lives.)


Update: Gamma Goblin kindly pointed out in the comments that this matter isn't as black and white as I'd like to believe. The prick.

Aldi's Bargain Basement Bullshit

I am incapable of going on a shopping trip to an Aldi or Lidl store without checking out the weekly 'special offers'. I appreciate the efforts to have themed catalogues of 'fishing', 'camping', or 'world cup', but more often than not, the stores are filled with a mishmash of unrelated paraphernalia ranging from media-centre PCs to electric dog-bowl warmers.

On my most recent trip to my local Aldi, I observed the following on sale for €2.75 or so:

The ACU-STRAP morning & motion sickness band!  No drugs? Non drowsy? Sounds fantastic!

Let's investigate a little. What does this product do?

Stop travel sickness before it starts! The Acu-Strap uses the science of acupressure to alleviate the nausea of Morning Sickness, Travel Sickness, Anesthia and Chemotherapy. [Source]

Neat! The "science of acupressure". What is "acupressure"? Well, it works on the same principles of acupuncture - applying pressure to parts of your body to trigger a self-healing effect. After some investigation, it seems that while the proponents agree that acupressure works, few of the believers seem to agree on what the actual mechanism at work is, or even agree on how to map out the pressure points on the body. How very curious.

Skeptical Neuroscientist Steven Novella wrote a piece called "Why I am Skeptical of Acupuncture", and any sensible person who takes the time to read it ought to agree with him, so allow me to quickly copy and paste the five headings he uses to focus his undermining of this ancient chinese practice:

1) Acupuncture is a pre-scientific superstition

2) Acupuncture lacks a plausible mechanism

3) Claims for efficacy are often based upon a bait-and-switch deception.

4) Clinical trials show that acupuncture does not work

Okay, so acu-puncture/pressure doesn't work, but what's the harm? What's the harm in charging people €3 to wear a piece of cloth with a plastic nipple and enjoy a relatively cheap placebo effect?

Forgive the 'slippery-slope' mentality, but I can only see it as a negative that something so stupid is available so cheap on the mass market. This moronic fashion statement is a conversation-starter, and over countless coffees across Ireland, credulous nitwits will hear their friends rave about their magic wrist-bands that cured their nausea, as they regurgitate the pseudo-science about 'acupressure' and contribute to the growing number of people who are turning away from science-based medicine and embracing flashing lights, ritualistic practices, and other expensive (and dangerous) wastes of time, when genuine medical intervention means the difference between life and death.

I entirely expect that the vast majority of people who use this product will realise that it's a piece of junk as soon as they stop to consider that there's no instructions in the packaging telling them how to position the "scientific" acu-pressure nipple they just purchased, and that their nausea and vomiting hasn't taken the slightest hit. All the same, I worry for the ninnies (won't somebody please think of the ninnies!). The people who persevere with this piece of crap because they see that the box says to "Stop travel sickness before it starts!", so they wear the band constantly to keep the threat at bay. It's cheaper than buying medicine or going to the doctor, so if it doesn't work, just keep adjusting it until it hits the sweet spot!

I fired off an e-mail to Acu-Life, posing as a customer seeking advice on how to wear the band. This is the response I got:

I am not familiar with the Acu-Strap wristband... I am not sure there is any simple remedy for morning sickness. Generally, it passes after the first 3 months of pregnancy.

The Acu-Life strategy:

1. Remove references to shitty product from website.
2. Deny existence of shitty product.
3. Sell remaining stock to Aldi for quick hocking.
4. Profit!

Remember, reading Sully's blog keeps Rheumatism and Gout, Lumbago, Sciatica, and Arthritis at bay, and balances the body's four humors! If you stop reading now, it could be fatal.

Much ado about fadas

Part of the problem with being a pretentious prick is when technology obstinately reminds you that you’re a knob, and punishes you for it:

'Seÿffffffffffe1n' over e-mail, but 'Sully' to my friends

My name is Seán. Not Shaun, or Shawn, and certainly not Sean. It's Seán.

I’m not sure when exactly I decided that rendering my name “Seán” without the fada over the “a” was wrong, but I suspect that I became more insistent about it during the time I spent in the States, as I tried to impress upon the local ladies of Pittsburgh that I was interesting and exotic (“You have an accent? That’s hot. We should make out”).

It’s likely that I’m a stickler for the fada because Seán is such a common name on the Emerald Isle (in both senses of the word). I figure being one of the breed who is fussy about having it included separates me somewhat from those who don’t care (and those who insist on its omission).

It's not an unreasonable insistence – it's only people from Ireland that are expected to know about the sanctity of the fada. If I’m asked to spell my name by a person who sounds like a paddy, I’ll tell them “S, E, A, fada N”, and listen for the derisive light scoff. I don’t expect non-nationals to ‘get’ the fada, so I don’t subject them to it unless they bring up how wrong my name looks written down (a Polish colleague refers to me as ‘Soen’ in all e-mail correspondence, and it’s starting to grow on me.)

While I'm keenly aware that not everybody should know what to do with the fada, I've yet to get it through my thick skull that websites will often freak out when I spell my name the "right" way. When flying from New York to Pittsburgh, I suffered unnecessary delays because my boarding pass said "Se n". Being exceptionally slow to learn, a month later I got a boarding pass that said "Sen". Rather than fixing the root cause of the problem, I just got better at giving bitesize explanations for the fada and how computers don't like it. (I mentioned the 'Sen' thing back in February 2007)

As my garbled name in the screenshot above attests, putting a fada into an online form is a bit of a gamble, as there's no telling what will come out on the other side. A messy e-mail header is harmless enough, but when the bouquet of roses I sent my ladyfriend from Flowers.com came with a lovely note signed by somebody called "Se??????n", I felt it spoiled the sentiment somewhat.

After giving my (US-based) girlfriend some casual abuse over her 'inability' to spell my name correctly online, she jumped on the fada bandwagon. Including the fada is a cinch on Irish / UK keyboards [just hold down the Alt-Gr key when pressing a vowel], but US keyboards lack this functionality. It turned out that every time she wanted to casually mention my name in an e-mail that I would never see, she would have to go to my Facebook profile and copy/paste the troublesome character, or use the 'insert symbol' feature on Word.

Until I had to send an e-mail to a lecturer with a US-keyboard, I never truly appreciated what a pain in the arse this was, and despite my repeated insistences that I'm reformed and no longer demand to see the 'a' in my name wearing its proper headdress, she and a few of my close friends go to the bother anyway, in a uniquely touching display of my monomania taking precedence over their convenience.

I'm a little torn on this whole 'fada' business. As a pedant, I want things to be done right, but I appreciate that something of such little import should scarcely warrant a moment's thought, let alone an anguished blog entry. I know that more often than not, using a fada online is throwing a spanner in the works, but shouldn't web developers have adapted to their world-wide-userbase by now? It's tough enough for us Irish folk on the Internet ("Come on now Seœ∂fµn", the websites condescend to me, "every developed nation in the world has a postal code, just fill yours in and we can both get on with our day"). Shouldn't we Irish be able to enjoy the small dignity of being able to spell one's name as it's intended?

A matter of self-Ctrl

Since getting her new Dell Inspiron 1545 in December, I’ve been listening to a steady trickle of complaints from my girlfriend about how it seems to have a life of its own. Browser tabs opening and closing, text randomly being cut and pasted, and most upsettingly: windows closing without warning, eviscerating filled text boxes.

I give my girlfriend more credit than most (as she generally deserves it more than most) but experience has shown that whenever anyone starts complaining about a “stupid computer”, a stupid user is most likely to be the culprit. Since the problem only occurred intermittently during typing, and as every one of the seemingly autonomous actions the computer was taking could be prompted by holding Ctrl and pressing a certain key, I quickly arrived at the conclusion that she was accidentally hitting the ctrl key during her furious typing sessions.

When I tried typing on her computer, I had no difficulties, and while I was never thrashing out long essays or blog posts, it galvanised the notion that user-error was to blame, not a malevolent computer exercising its free will. I explained to her about all the Ctrl-key related shortcuts, and told her to be more careful with how she rested her hands on the keyboard, and congratulated myself on another mystery solved.

About two months later, she brought up the issue again. I stood over her, dictating an absurd narrative that spoke highly of me, and she hammered away at the keys at a frenetic pace that left me little time to ponder synonyms for ‘magnanimous’. Eventually, the font on the screen flashed blue then disappeared. She screamed a triumphant “A-HA!” and pointed at the screen. I told her that she had hit ‘Ctrl-A’ to ‘select all’, then kept typing, and that she should ‘Ctrl-Z’ to get her work back. Her 'proof' debunked, I saw fit to reiterate the ‘hotkey’ lesson from before, blaming her woes on a misplaced pinkie. She glumly accepted my diagnosis.

Two more months passed by, and after a busy semester and a half of typing on this laptop, she told me again that she was still having trouble. She had been filling in some schoolwork into an online form and the window closed on her, setting her back a few minutes. After she provided a swift rebuttal to my light scolding for not doing her work on Word then copying/pasting, I decided I should humour her with some troubleshooting over the phone.

Even though it had been the first thing I did when I was setting up her computer, I talked her through the steps of disabling Stickykeys. She got to the appropriate screen, and sure enough, all the relevant boxes were unchecked, except one, which related to ‘Function keys’. I told her to disable it to see if it made a difference. She quickly rattled off some text, and observed no issues. She seemed enthused, optimistic, and above all, grateful that I stopped trying to convince her that her sloppy typing style was causing the trouble.

It was nice to see her so happy.

I got a text message from her the following day – her text messages are generally characterised by tongue-in-cheek petnames and frenzied over-punctuation – the message I got that day did not match her trademark style:

Had no troubles today, but I did trigger a load of shortcuts right after we talked yesterday. It’s my right pinky finger hitting control. I’ll have to change my typing habits

“It’s my right pinky finger”. “I did trigger a load of shortcuts”. She was finally taking responsibility for her typing quirks – I should have felt relieved, and yet, this crestfallen text message broke my little heart.

Realizing I had broke my girlfriend flipped a switch in my head, surely there’s some problem with the laptop – nobody could have these kind of issues five months later, especially not a good typist like her. My girlfriend's too smart for this kind of stuff.

For the first time ever, I googled the problem.

Son of a bitch! I hadn’t even finished typing and the problem was popping up at me. Within fourteen seconds of beginning the investigation, I had found a sure-fire solution.

Dozens of people were crying bloody murder about the problem, many of whom had resorted to sending the computer back to Dell up to four times for repair / replacement. In the end, what solved it for them was disabling a setting on the touchpad that makes the computer act as though the Ctrl key has been pressed.

Bugger. All the vitriol and anguish thrown around on the Dell support forums, and I treated my girlfriend’s gently raised-issues as an opportunity to pontificate on ‘hotkeys’ used by ‘powerusers’.

I don’t know what the lesson is to be learnt here. Maybe it’s that I’m capable of being a good boyfriend to my girlfriend, but it only kicks in after I’ve broken her spirit, leaving me to remould her as I see fit.

Annoying habits my girlfriend is beating out of me: Episode 1

My girlfriend is pretty spectacular. Smart, sociable, conscientious. Me? Not so much. I like to think that this makes us a well-balanced, fully funtional unit, but she's decided that my inability to negotiate through the most mundane of human-interactions without incident is a character flaw, rather than the endearing quirk I keep telling her it is.

I've noticed lately that she's taken a more proactive approach to eliminating my autistic proclivities, which I can only ascribe to the sudden realisation that she's already invested three years in me, and will forever be regarded as sullied in the eyes of all other men.

Today, I'll tell you about one such quirk, starting with the background:

During the academic year of 2006/2007 I racked up an impressive tally of air-miles, and often found myself rushing through busy airport terminals to catch connecting flights. It was always a pain that most time was spent at the security checkpoints, and I'd often find myself running towards my gate whilst fastening my belt.

It makes sense, right? Everybody in the airport has jumped through the same hoops you did, so anyone looking at the man walking through the terminal dressing himself should be able to deduct that he just came through security and is rushing to his gate.

Well, eventually I made it a policy to save time in all my belt-buckling endeavours when leaving security checkpoints; regardless of whether I was in a panicked dash to the gate, or leisurely browsing through duty-free shops, I'd be seen adjusting my pants.

I realised that I had hit the nadir of this slippery slope when walking out of a cinema water-closet towards my patiently waiting ladyfriend. She had her shoulders agressively hunched in puzzlement and asked me "what the hell" I was doing.

I wondered if I had left something hanging out as I tightened my belt, then realised that the kerfuffle was over the habit I paid little attention to. A time-saving habit from my 'airport' programming had permeated every occurrence of my belt refastening.

The trouble with these behavioural abnormalities is that since I only get to see my ladyfriend for a few days every few months, the inevitable relapses mean that we often retread the same territory, only with increasing exasperation on her part.

Most guys I know love saving time, and we often share little tips to shave a few seconds off daily routines (like flushing the toilet during the final 15% of urination so you can just zip up and walk away), and it seems to me that the problem lies with society, not me, so finding the right motivational angle proves difficult for my stalwart woman-friend.

To wean off breaking the unwritten law of society pertaining to correct belt-usage, she's tried vocal indignation, silent disgruntlement, and attempted to shame me in front of her friends, all to no avail.

A few months ago, we were visiting her friends who had just got married, moved in together, and were generally getting well into the 'grown up' phase of their lives. After returning to the living room, where all eyes were fixed on the TV, my beloved spun around with a big smile on her face. Her eyes met mine, then flicked down to see that I was still getting dressed. She turned back towards the TV, visibly disappointed, and for the first time, I felt a pang of shame.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

All aboard the discipline ship

I like lent. I've told you this before.

I'll take a pass the dogma from the kiddy-fiddler-facilitators who promulgate the practice, but I quite like the seasonal imperative to impose a bit of self-restraint.

Not only that, but it always makes for a few fun conversations with friends and acquaintances: from the initial announcement of the overly-ambitious lenten vow, to the cognitive dissonance reduction that transpires once those few salvos of weakness cause significant structural damage to the discipline-ship, and the entire endeavour is scrapped.

This lent, like the last lent I blogged about (2 whole years ago), to celebrate the forty days and forty nights of rain that God used to begin his creation anew (I prefer the models that you shake to start again), I'm putting a stop to my habit of guzzling sweet, sweet carbonated beverages.

Since most significant events in my life are logged on this blog, I looked it up: I announced the last soda fast on March 6th 2008 - two weeks since my last Coke, and I caved in to temptation on May 11th when illness and exams got the better of me.

This duration is impressive in hindsight - especially considering I've gone three days without a Coke and I still feel the need to yammer about my abstinence to bolster my resolve.

Like the Lenten-teetotallers who perseverate over the proper course of action to take on a St Patrick's Day that will cruelly take place during the planned dry-spell, I too am wondering how my self-governance will cope during my upcoming trip to the States and its bountiful supplies of the elixir known as Mountain Dew.

Who else is joining in the forgoing fun of Lent? (Got any good special pleadings to share so I can score some 'Dew?)

Pedant's Corner

My internet connection is important to me - it's the main conduit to that girlfriend of mine whose position relative to the Atlantic ocean is more noticeable when the broadband is on the fritz. What ought to be the highlight of my day becomes a bit of a chore, as we unsuccessfully play games of "guess the missing words", or test the other's endurance by seeing how many times they're willing to repeat what they just said (it turns out that we're not really as interested in each other's day as you might think).

As the connection hasn't been reliable lately, I've taken to running a speed-test before we chat; this means that my expectations for the following conversation are already low. While my speed-test of choice is Blacknight's Irish ISP Test, tonight I thought it prudent to run the Imagine speedtest, as they're my service provider.


Sure enough, the download speed was just over half what it should be (jitter rates and QOS aren't reported by Imagine), but the red boxout over the speedtest drew my eye:

Not only are they shilling WiMax by denigrating "slow broadband down your phone line" (which is what they're currently providing me with), they've also packaged this bold proclamation with the authority and gravitas of a pre-pubescent secondary schooler who is hedging her bets through an English assignment.

To say "you are" do I use "your" or "you're"? I know! I'll stick one I think is right in the title, and use the other one later!

Hmmm... How do I say "It is"? Maybe an "Its" without an apostrophe will do. But what about "that is"? Better stick in an "apostrophe S" to be sure.

It's stupid, it's unnecessary, it's inconsistent. If you're going to be wrong, at least have a sense of style about it! Lazy efforts like this annoy me immensely - I'm sure you'll find plenty of stupid mistakes and oversights and nonsense on this very blog, but you can take solace in the knowledge that I didn't get paid for them!

Just look at my raaange!

It may shock you to read this, dear reader, but I'm not just a lazy blogger who struggles to upload 5 poorly-articulated, ill-conceived nonsensical rants a month. I'm a lazy blogger guilty of the aforementioned who once had to cobble together a song for his Introduction to Radio Production class!


SullydidthisforcollegeinAmereeka by ubersully

Yes, the song is utter dreck, and it consists entirely of loops from Garageband, but this still counts as one of my 5 for the month.

"Curious Spell"

Part of my identity as an equal-opportunity ridiculer of the irrational means that I will gladly turn my ever-present scepticism inward, re-examining certain episodes in my life with a critical slant, and this blog entry is another example of this endeavour.

Sit a little closer, dear reader, as your champion of rationality rebuker of the deluded shares a tale of how he came to be so disgracefully mawkish that he had sentimental feelings towards a unit of legal tender.


Back in the spring of 2005, I made the acquaintance of a girl called Caitlyn, an exchange student who was spending a semester at the University of Limerick, and we managed to strike up a fairly solid friendship in no time at all. Before returning to her native Wisconsin, Cait went wandering around Europe to cap off her sojourn. During this trip, she sent me an e-mail asking me to top up her phone with €10 credit, and I happily obliged.

She had organised her trip in such a way that she’d only be home in Ireland for an overnight stay before getting up early for the transatlantic flight home, and mine was the house that made sense to crash in, in terms of airport proximity. The next morning, as she was loading her bags into the taxi, she remembered the €10 that she owed me, and insisted on paying me back. As all she had to hand was a ten-pound note from the Bank of Scotland (worth at least 40% more than what she owed me at the time) that was what she gave me. Whilst conceding my failed-attempt at refusing reimbursal, I gave her a mischievous look and promised her that I’d spend it on her next time she was around, and I slipped the foreign note into my wallet. It was June 2005.

Over a year and a half later, after a few funny weeks of awkward transition, this friend of mine became my girlfriend. While it was a surprise at the time, when I reflect on how utterly arrested I was by the currency she gave me from our last interaction, I realise how blind I was to the obvious.

The tenner stayed in my wallet for years, folded away into an otherwise-uselessly small compartment, and came with me during my stint in Belgium, my year of college in Pittsburgh, and my trip to Hong Kong. When I bought a new wallet in 2006, the note jumped ship with everything else. Even though I was aware of its presence, the £10 was never spent over the course of three trips to Northern Ireland and Britain. Eventually, last May, after returning from a trip to Oxford in which I realised I had carried around dollars, euros, and pounds in my wallet, I decided to sort out my currencies, and the £10 was placed in the small pot in my room, where it would remain for the next eight months.

When Cait and I were packing for our trip to England last fortnight, I grabbed my UK-currency pot, and brought her attention to the tenner. It came with us on our trip, riding in the main compartment of my wallet for the first time in years. For the first day and a half of our two-day trip, when making purchases that came to just under a tenner, I’d open my wallet, and find a few twenty pound notes and the one ‘special’ note, and hand over the twenty every time.

This situation presented itself numerous times, until the final few hours of our time in London, when my wallet contained just a £20 note and the one seemingly imbued with magical powers. Stepping in out of the cold at a Starbucks just off Regent St., we ordered two hot beverages, a rocky road bar and a blueberry muffin. The total came to around £9.65.

The deliberation must have confused our server.

“Hey Cait - I have a twenty and a ten”

“So use the ten... Oh.”

“Well, it makes sense to use it, it is legal tender”

“Oh... Okay.”

“And I did say I’d find a way to spend it on you”

I gave Cait a mischievous look as I handed over the note, which was snatched away from my grasp and replaced with coins, just like any other note I’ve ever handed to a cashier, and we shuffled out of the way of the queue to wait for our drinks.

It was gone.

It deserved to be put on a raft and set ablaze with flaming arrows to signify its eternal glory in the note afterlife, or used as a clever prop in a profound romantic gesture. Instead, the note that was bestowed upon me by my significant-other, which had accompanied me on more of my adult life than any living person was just another note in just another cash register in just another Starbucks.

As we sat at the table, nursing our coffees, I struggled to make the occasion momentous:

“So Cait, this is an appropriate end, right? I mean - we’re together now, we’re in the UK, we spent it on us”.

She smiled weakly.

“In a way Cait, this is it. This is us shedding the last remnant of Sullard and C [asinine nicknames we subjected each other to before we started dating], and embracing our new...-”

She rolled her eyes at me.

“Okay, so that’s a bit of a stretch alright.”

We both looked over towards the till for a minute, watching money changing hands, watching the customers shuffling along, thinking that any one of them was potentially inheriting the item that held a curious spell over me for over four and a half years which would now resume its utilitarian purpose. As I observed, I briefly entertained using my remaining £20 to get the £10 back, but in the end, reason prevailed.

Steamy feet

When she isn't sending me blogging grist from afar, my ladyfriend often comes and falls in step with my life for a week or two at a time in the land of Ire. After gleaning immense enjoyment from our two weeks of being tethered together, the operating conditions of our long-distance relationship has sharply snapped back to 'famine' from 'feast', so I'm starting to think about this poor, neglected blog of mine for the first time in 2010.

Since my ever-patient girlfriend makes a point of making me do stuff I wouldn't normally do, the past two weeks have been eventful, but haven't quite left me feeling as though I've two weeks' worth of blogging to catch up on. But to quickly summarise:

We went ice skating! [Pictured: my post skating foot]

We went to see The Lion King on the West End!

We stood in front of buildings in a fashion befitting that of a lowly tourist!

Most importantly, we survived The Big Freeze™ with only minor disruptions to our hygiene practices!

Now that my girlfriend has gone back from whence she came, I can relapse back into the cantankerous bloggering bastard who tries not to subject his four readers to too many holiday slideshows. Here's to a miserable 2010!