Kathy Foley

Oh dear, not so consistent on the whole blogging front. Apologies to those who’ve been leaving comments and not getting any responses…life and work just got in the way!

Anyhoo, there won’t be much happening around here for the next few weeks as I’m off on me holliers for three and a half weeks. (The half is extremely important). Will get around to updating things when I get back.

I’d tell you where you I’m going, but you can probably guess from the following playlist. I’ve just burned it onto to a CD to stick on in the convertible tomorrow when we pick it up in the airport. If this doesn’t get us in the mood for a road trip, I don’t know what will.

(re: There may seem to be no defence for Smokie, track 11…all I can say is that Thelma [or is she Louise, not sure yet] demanded something to which she could sing along)

1. California
Phantom Planet
2. Californication
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3. California Dreamin’
The Mamas & The Papas
4. California Love
2Pac
5. Hotel California
Gipsy Kings
6. California Girls
Beach Boys
7. California Girls
Magnetic Fields (“I hate California Girls…” – fantastic)
8. Dani California
Red Hot Chilis again
9. California Uber Alles
Dead Kennedys
10. California Rain
Madeleine Peyroux
11. It Never Rains in Southern California
Smokie
12. California Stars
Billy Bragg & Wilco

Many people think journalists are overpaid. The problem is that they don’t see how much work we do behind the scenes, as it were. I’ve been working very hard today reading a press release about a new report.

It asks some interesting questions. Hard questions. Questions that need answering. The report apparently answers these questions in great detail, but it costs €2,695, so I’ve been trying to answer the questions myself, with mixed fortunes, I have to admit.

How big a threat is drinkable yogurt to spoonable?
Huge, undoubtedly. Drinkable yogurt is like the weapon of mass destruction of the dairy industry. Except it actually exists. And it’s runnier than normal yogurt. And you don’t need any cutlery to consume it.

What are the potential strategies for engaging more men in the yogurt category?
Ah, easy when you know how. Put nearly-naked ladies on yogurt packaging. Or maybe put yogurt on nearly-naked ladies. Definitely some sort of nearly-naked lady tie-in. Consider a spin-off line featuring nearly-naked men, thereby also engaging even more men (the ones who aren’t bothered with nearly-naked ladies).

What foods could be packaged successfully as yogurt mix-ins?
Ooh, this is a hard one. Probably not chorizo. Or tripe. Fish might work. Although, no, on second thoughts, I don’t think it would. I’ll get back to you.

Is there a market for “body cleansing” yogurt (for example, for detoxing or quitting smoking)?
Yes! Yes there is! And that market is me. I love yogurt. I hate not being able to give up smoking. If you invent quit-smoking yogurt that actually works, I will buy it by the fucking gallon.

**

Why, why, WHY am I being sent press releases about the US yogurt market?

**
Anyone who even thinks about making a smart comment about the level of insight, authority and influence of this post and its contribution to our understanding of culture and society in a wider context will get gone-off yogurts through their letterbox. That is a promise.

Just a quickie to say thanks for all the comments so far. I will get to them individually later, but the deadlines are stacked here like planes at Heathrow. And to clarify the clarification (this may never end!), I stand by what I said originally, but very happy to tease out a more nuanced understanding of blogging in Ireland.

Also just want to draw attention a comment made by Alan below there:

“A little more investigation of the Irish Blog Awards winners would lead to Arseblog which measures daily visits in the tens of thousands, far more than nearly all the most high profile UK political blogs. It has spawned dozens of other Arsenal related blogs and is widely recognised as one of the stand-out sports blogs in the world. Last year it beat Gawker’s Deadspin site to win the best sports blog in the bloggies (http://2007.bloggies.com). A must-read and highly influential Irish blog.”

Have to hold my hands up on that one. Was aware of Arseblog, but it didn’t come to mind when I was writing the original piece, probably because although it’s an Irish blog, it’s not one about Ireland or Irish life.

Sadly, have no interest in football and less in the ins and outs of what’s happening at Arsenal. Mind you, always took an interest in Thierry Henry, but that’s to do with his va-va-voom and not what he can do with a football. Anyway, deserved props to Arseblog.

To clarify - I didn’t criticise the book because Twenty is a blogger or because I wanted to get one up on anyone (don’t really see how that would work) or because I wanted to make a name for myself (better and more hideously embarrassing ways of doing that, were I so inclined).

I criticised it because I didn’t think it was good. I hoped it would be better. I’m all for bloggers getting book deals – it’s a fantastic way of widening out the field of books published here and elsewhere.

So if I thought the book was up to scratch or the best thing I’d read all year, I would have said so. But I didn’t. Sorry, but there you have it. I’ll wait for the books from Grandad and Fiona McPhillips and if I think they’re good, I’ll say it. I know I’ll love the Icecream Ireland book if it has half as much wit and panache as the blog concerned.

Of course most blogs are either personal or specialist, but I still don’t think we have that many really excellent examples of either. To quote Haydn, “I don’t read many Irish blogs because they are inward looking, technical or incestuous.” Maybe as Mark Waters said below there in a comment, that’s because the Irish blogosphere is reflective of Ireland.

Mind you, there’s me complaining about a lack of intellectual rigour and, what do you know, people start referencing Ionesco in blog posts.

Actually, Haydn also mentioned Sweary’s blog and I would have certainly given props to her were she still blogging all the time. Arse End of Ireland was crude at times, but it gave fantastic insight into a side of Irish society that many people pretend doesn’t exist. I voted for it as Best Blog last year and thought it should have been obligatory reading for anyone in a position to effect any change.

Also, want to clarify that I didn’t say Irish bloggers were philistines. I said we, meaning Irish people, are philistines when it comes to digital culture i.e. out there in the wider world, the majority of Irish people don’t get blogging or the point of blogging. That was one of the main points I was trying to communicate. It’s a fantastic medium, but it’s not anywhere near mature here yet.

One of the commenters on Twenty’s site said that the Sunday Times is an MI5 mouthpiece. That’s true, actually. Our pens shoot bullets and our Dictaphones are really state-of-the-art surveillance thingies.

Lastly, in case anyone thought I lacked the courage of my convictions, I wasn’t at the Blog Awards because I was otherwise engaged celebrating my brother’s 40th. Faaahmlee comes first.

March 2nd, 2008

Thirty-five cents won’t buy you much these days. A few loose envelopes maybe, but not the price of posting them. An extra few minutes parking, but not the minimum amount for the meter. If you dropped 35c, would you bother to pick it up?

A measly 35c was the difference in price between Dunnes and Tesco for trolleys filled by the National Consumer Agency (NCA) with an identical selection of 61 branded products. Better value might beat them all, but not by very much, it turns out. In Superquinn the trolley of goods cost €1.91 more than in Dunnes, an insignificant difference on a bill of almost €190.

Despite the abolition of the Groceries Order and the constant stream of flyers inserted into newspapers and wedged through our letterboxes promising special deals and unprecedented value from various supermarkets, there is almost no variation in pricing between the leading chains. Funny how the words “price-fixing” and “cartel” spring to mind.

Keep reading →

Culture, Mar 2nd, 2008

It should have been a vindication of sorts, an affirmation that the fledgling medium of blogging had grown up enough to warrant something as old-fashioned as a book deal. Not that Twenty Major’s royalties advance was a record-breaker: at four figures, it represents a low-stakes bet by the publishers Hodder Headline.

Twenty Major even comes with an existing readership: TwentyMajor.net is the best-known Irish blog. The eponymous blogger also has a gallery of fully-formed and foul-mouthed fictional characters: Jimmy the Bollix, Dirty Dave and Lucky Luciano.

So his debut novel, The Order of the Phoenix Park, should have been a coming-of-age milestone for Irish blogging. Instead, it’s a tepid, flimsily plotted satire filled with half-cocked gags. It’s not that they’re puerile and scatological, for that is Twenty Major’s métier, it’s just that they’re unfunny.

Readers of this damp-squib novel can be forgiven for wondering why anybody would consider such material worth publishing and whether the blogosphere - to give it its non-technical name - is anything more than a free soap box for ranting foul-mouthed angry white males, the sort of individuals who fulminate on radio phone-ins and fantasise about taking revenge for its perceived failings.

To the extent that blogging crosses the public consciousness at all in Ireland, it’s seen largely as an onanistic niche activity for self-regarding geeks, oddballs and social pariahs. We don’t really get the concept of blogging. We don’t take it seriously as a “fifth estate”, where the readers are just as much part of the discourse as the writers. When it comes to digital culture, we’re philistines.

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I figured I wasn’t alone this morning wondering if the Oscar win for Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (and those gorgeous acceptance speeches) would finally mean a breakthrough in the US for The Frames. Great to see that NPR is wondering too - Falling Slowly is its Song of the Day.

“One of the best live bands in existence — for evidence, listen to ‘What Happens When the Heart Just Stops (audio) from the tremendous 2004 live album Set List — The Frames and singer Glen Hansard seem perpetually on the brink of becoming massively famous, even iconic. [...] A longtime master of sad-bastard music at its most sublimely melodramatic, Hansard actually finds words of hard-won hope and comfort on ‘Falling Slowly’: ‘You have suffered enough and warred with yourself / It’s time that you won.’”

“Sad-bastard music” - lovely.

The NPR Song of the Day newsletter is worth subscribing to, for anyone interested in finding new music, or at least, music new to them. Among albums I’ve discovered through it are Neruda Songs (Lorraine Hunt Lieberson) and Scene of the Crime (Bettye Lavette).

Had fun this morning chatting about ‘financial fantasists’ with Ryan Tubridy and John McGuire from I’m An Adult, Get Me Out of Here. And, no, finding a rich man isn’t actually the key to sorting out your finances.

Listen here. Today’s date and it’s about 40 minutes in.

Incidentally, when I arrived at Radio Centre, I had to wait to speak to the receptionist for a couple of minutes as she was on the phone discussing the Eurovision. I thought she was just catching up with a friend, but no. She came off the call, gave me a weary look and sighed. “I’m going to be taking calls about that turkey all day.”

February 24th, 2008

Wrinkles? Grey hair? Dodgy back, hips and knees? Other people would never believe it, but you’re probably thrilled skinny with life,notwithstanding your accelerating decrepitude. This is according to a new study, which found that people get happier as they get older.

I ran this theory past my (retired) father. “Dad,” sez I, “this study says that older people are just as happy as young people.”

“What?” he spluttered, “Jaysus, that’s not true at all - sure we’re 20 times happier.”

I pointed out that according to this latest research young people associate old age with doom and gloom. “Oh yes,” he nodded, making a pretend-serious face. “It’s very doomy and gloomy around here alright.” Then he guffawed again and went off to make a cup of tea. The boffins could be onto something.

Keep reading →

Came across a link to this over on Mental Floss. Clicked through and laughed. That is not how you make a French breakfast. This is how you make a French breakfast.

Ingredients:
Coffee
Cup
Cigarettes
Lighter
Croissant (optional)

Steps:
1. Make incredibly strong coffee.
2. Pour into cup.
3. Buy croissant from local bakery. (Skip this step if preferred).
4. Light cigarette.

Tips:
Purse lips frequently. Grimace. Shrug a lot.

Warnings:
Indigestion and a constant rattling cough will inevitably follow.

Things you’ll need:
Gallic flair
1 coffee maker