People are so easily offended

Whatever about me wondering if it was still August (After the Deluge, below), now I'm starting to wonder if it's even 2008..

It's been a great news day for insults, racism and all-round bad behaviour.

1. The Spanish basketball team, currently world champions, posed for a promotional photograph advertising their Olympic sponsor. In it they have all pulled their eyes back in a hilarious slit-eyed manner. And this from a country whose reputation on race matters is hardly at an all-time high. Nice one, Spain.

2. Meanwhile, closer to home, an English pipe fitter earns a payout of €20,000 at an Equality Tribunal after they heard how he was abused by his Irish colleagues after starting work on a building site in 2006. Rebel songs, negative comments and general insulting.. Good work - lets put the filthy Tan in his place. 800 years of oppression and all that.. Although I'm sure there's lots of Irish men who've worked building sites in London and Manchester and Birmingham who could tell similar tales. But of course that's the past. And the past is another country. Still, fortunately, the days of No Blacks, No Irish and No Dogs are a thing of the past, right?

3. A house is listed for renting in Belfast with a sign that says "This property is not available for any foreigners." Ah. You're not allowed do that anymore are you? Unless he just meant that he didn't want anybody from 80s rock legend Foreigner to rent his house. Which would be fine. Still at least most foreigners have soap which brings us back again to the Olympics.

4. The head of Australia's Olympic Committee, John Coates responds to Rebecca Adlington's 400m freestyle gold for Britain by saying "It's not bad for a country that has no swimming pools and very little soap."Actually I'm not sure if that's offensive or just funny. Although perhaps by saying that I'm just showing myself to be no better than anyone else.

5. And finally there's the story of that lovely cute Chinese girl who sang at the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday. Turns out that the cute girl, Lin Miaoke, wasn't actually singing but was, in fact, miming to a song which was originally sung by the very talented but not quite so cute, Yang Peiyi. She was replaced by the organisers because her teeth are crooked and therefore didn't fit the required profile. I'm surprised anyone really noticed. I thought all Chinese people were supposed to look the same.*

So that's a good day's work. Let's see who's been insulted: The Spanish insulted the Chinese, the Irish insulted the English, The Northern Irish insulted the rest of the world, the Australians insulted the British and the Chinese insulted 9-year olds everywhere with crooked teeth.

It's political incorrectness gone mad!

*Obviously that's a joke, China.

Don't know, don't care

Spotted this fantastic poll on breakingnews.ie earlier. It seems that 59% of people who responded to the 'News Poll' don't care whether or not Lindsay Lohan courts publicity. In fact they don't care so much that they were compelled to cast a vote to say as much.. I know it doesn't take a great deal of effort to cast an online vote but why would you bother?

Afer the Deluge

This was what the streets around Connolly Towers looked like on Sunday after Saturday's rain. It is still August, isn't it?

Incidentally, isn't that an enormous Jesus outside the Church? Looks like he's hailing a cab or something.

Barack Astley

Some people have too much time on their hands. The rest of us can only admire them.

It's nature, innit?

This is a chilli plant made from actual chilli seeds.. Two weeks ago we took a handful of seeds from a chilli we were using for dinner and chucked them in a pot of muck. Nothing happened for about a week until we put it in the gas storage box thing in the living room. The following day we saw little green leaves. So that tells us that it likes heat. It's been a week now and this is what she looks like. Supposedly, you're meant to name plants so this one is called Matilda. I though David was a better name but I was outvoted. Which is to say that my vote didn't count at all.. Probably for the best..

Anyway, my point is, isn't nature amazing? Who knew that chucking a few seeds in a pot would yield all these leaves and might yet yield a load of chillis. Actually everyone knows that, don't they?

Still - expect regular updates. Or none at all, if she dies over the next few days. We'll see..

Spell it out

The papers today have all been leading with Madeline McCann stories. Obviously it's a story that continues to provoke great interest and it's no surprise that all the papers and news sites have been covering the latest revelations. What's more surprising is that there doesn't seem to be any consensus on how to spell her abbreviated name. I mean, for over a year we've been bombarded with information and speculation about her disappearance and yet at least half of the news outlets in the UK and Ireland are spelling her name incorrectly.

Perhaps they should ask her parents.

Missing

Every week on the radio show, we go through Saturday's newspapers and pick out interesting things to talk about. While we were browsing through them yesterday, I noticed that the Mirror had a story about Gerard McDonnell, the Limerick man who, on Friday, became the first Irishman to reach the peak of K2. As far as I can tell, the Mirror was the only paper that carried story but we picked up on it as a good news story and talked about it briefly. According to the article, K2 is supposed to be harder than Everest to climb and that more people have died on the descent than any other mountain. We casually chatted about how awful it would be to reach the peak but not make it back down..

Yesterday evening before I went out I noticed on the irish times website that McDonnell and his team of Dutch climber have, in fact, gone missing after falling ice hit them at 8,000m. This morning when I went for the papers, I found that most of them are now covering his disappearance. Whether he's alive or dead, and at the momet it seems unlikely that he'll be found alive, isn't it a shame that the papers seemed less interested to talk about his achievement on Friday morning than his disappearance on Friday evening?