Top O' The Morning to ye, and greetings from the future... Most kind introduction. Enjoying reading your blog. I confess that many of us over here in Hibernia are congenitally afflicted with TTM. But not all of us. As Father McGillycuddy was only saying to me last week after a particularly enjoyable 4 hour mass and glorious benediction, "Is iad na muca ciúine a itheann an mhín". Which of course translates into the oppressor's tongue as "It's the quiet pigs that eat the grain".

Now that's philosophy. Back of the net, Bertrand Russell, back of the net. Well, it's time for someone else in the house to use the candle, so I better say cheerio old beans and sign off. I'm writing this from Craggy Island and there's been another power strike, no electricity again. I'm off down the pub to find someone to talk to...

Posted by Niall (as in the river, not genuflection)
Altogether now, "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Lura....."

The Irish are so friendly and we are so guilible - so please can you all welcome Niall, an autentic Irish chap, better educated than most of us, with a sharpness of wit that could cut cheese (so to speak).

I am now spending so much time in Dublin that I fear I may have contracted * TTM from my exposure to the folk in Dublin. Apparently it is one of the few diseases that can be transmitted via the phone and in the early stages often presents itself by bouts of mononucleosis type letheragy and disinterest (usually when being subjected to lengthy diatribes on emerging technologies). TTM starts as a succession of chronic motor and vocal tics that begin when listening to complete bullshit, but psychiatric comorbidity also appears to be a primary feature. Motor tics, which are repetitive, involuntary stereotyped movements, most often involve the mouth, face, head or neck muscles, but may also involve the trunk and extremities. Physicians often mistake the disorder for a psychological problem, partly because most with the problem are able to suppress their symptoms for varying lengths of time and because symptoms typically disappear during sleep, sexual activity, periods of intense concentration, excessive drinking, or quality education.

The reliable cure is to go to think a lot, drink heavily and fall asleep (or just hang up the phone!).

* British Medical Journal: Jan 2005 Issue 278: Talking Too Much and Tourette's syndrome.

Coup de Boule

In the Wall Street Journal this week... front page, a story on Zidane head butting in the World Cup in Germany (near Paris). My view on this kind of behaviour is clear, dreadfully disgraceful and such are poor reflection on the everyone involved that I can barely talk.

Firstly, it is incomprehensible that such a paper would publish such a story four days after it happened, but then to sully the paper's front page with a color (colour) photo, what ever next! I thought those clever sketch artists can draw anything with just a very thin black pen.

The actual head butt has raised a few eyebrows over here in the US... parents up in arms about the bad example that this sets for our youth.... pppplease! You all said soccer was too boring, you wanted bigger goals, more parental fighting in the stands, ref replays so that we could decide if the ball was out or in.... Well, you wish has come true! Maybe you now want to rename the game to its true American title: Foot Hockey.

It the sensitive words of one American on foregn policy: "the Italians are cunning and Machiavellian; the French are immoral..."*


God save Zidane


* The Chinese are heathen and inscrutable; the Japanese are treacherous; the arrogant
Germans go berserk and run amuck; the Italians are cunning and Machiavellian;
the French are immoral; and the Dutch are stubborn. They are Wops, Spigs, Frogs, Gooks. Polocks, and Bohunks, who eat raw fish, snails , octupi, and grasshoppers. This alone is enough to condemn them. Colonel Willis M. Smyser, USAF, Member of the Faculty, ICAF in 1960: