The Internet: it's not just for porn..

It's there to help burglars too.

It's been 5 years since I moved into Connolly Towers and for that length of time, the window in one of the rooms has been locked. When I moved in I wasn't given a key for it and it was several months before I realised I couldn't open it..

I was getting some keys cut the other day and while there the key man told me that there could be upwards of 40 different keys that would work and unless I could get the casing from the handle in to him he wouldn't really be able to help me.. But there's always a way, isn't there, so I came back to the office, googled 'how to pick a lock' anmd this little video came up on youtube. And it worked!

I went home on Saturday evening, got a couple of hair clips and withing 5 seconds it was done.. The window was open and the room was aired for the first time in several years. Hurrah!

This One's Gonna Bruges

I've always had a problem with films that present criminals as protagonists. It doesn't matter what they're crimes are because by the time you've spent 2 hours in their company, you invariably end up rooting for them. The best example I can think of is Tony Soprano. No bigger thieving, murdering, unfaithful, double-crossing misogynist could you find in popular entertainment and yet the audience sees something in his humanity that makes them forgive and hope for better for the character.

Which leads me to In Bruges which gives us not one, but two Irish hitmen as the central characters. I can't say I agree with most of what I've been reading about it (relentlessly hilarious? who writes that stuff?) but I will say that it's a great big, flawed, lump of a film. Funny and sad and violent and tragic, it's got 2 great performances from Brendan Gleeson (who's never bad in anything) and Colin Farrell (who's frequently rubbish in everything, but not this).

The 2 of them are send to Bruges to hide out after a job went wrong back in London. It takes a while to find out what exactly went wrong. By the time we learn the true horror, we've already grown to like the 2 lads. Once we learn the truth though, the pair's behavior changes too. These guys aren't just a couple of chancers spending time in Belgium - they're violent, single-minded killers and you're never far from a reminder of why you don't want to love them.. So far so good but a subplot involving a girl and a dwarf actor on a film set starts to drag things off track. As they get more involved with the actor, you start to feel the contrivances adding up (how did the Canadians find Farrell on the train) and at one point near the end, the re-appearance of the dwarf lets you know where it's all going to end up..

Ralph Feinnes pops up as Harry, the foul-mouthed gangster who has sent the boys to Belgium and his performance swings between a sinister psychopath and a sensitive new man, He's good value even if mostly he's more of a reminder of (Sir) Ben Kingsley's similar bad guy in Sexy Beast.

As the film worked its way through co-incidences and surprises towards its conclusion I was actually quite excited that the filmmakers might be prepared to make the tough choices and not pander to its audience's demand. You know - happy endings and moral lessons. In fairness I won't say what actually happens at the end except to say that the almost got it right apart from the very last scenes on the film set which may have been an attempt at pathos but really just came off as a bad joke..

Still - there's plenty to enjoy. Farrell and Gleeson are terrific, the dialogue is terrific, the jokes, when they come, are funny and the insults are ferocious. In fact, it could be one of the least PC films I've seen for a long time. For all that though, there's lots of good stuff about Jesus, saints, spirituality, heaven and hell and purgatory. At one point Farrell's character compares Bruges to Hell but really I think it was more of a purgatory for both of them. A comfortable fairytale-like waiting room while their fate was decided. If that's the case, they got off lightly. If Bruges is what purgatory is like, I think we'll all be happy.

Defences down

So the Defence Forces are calling for a ban on using the current military trucks in the wake of Tueday's crash on the M50. I don't mean to be disrespectful towards our boys but really if we're getting to the stage that they're not prepared to get in the trucks to drive across town, you have to wonder exactly what they are prepared to do. For years the Irish Army has been a bit of a joke and things like this don't really help. Apart from turning an attractive shade of pink over in 'the Leb' and helping out with the bin collections during a binmen's strike about 25 years ago, does anyone really know what the Army does?

Like I say, I don't mean to put anyone down but having read that Osama Bin Laden is turning his attentions to the EU, you have to hope that he doesn't come knocking on our door. I'm not sure we'd put up much of a fight. Saying that I passed a bunch of soldier boys in the countryside last year and while I'm not quite sure what they're doing, I've no doubt that they could take me in a fight. Thank God I'm a pacifist..

The Finger of Blame

So Gardai claim to be 'happy' that the British teenager who claimed to have had his finger snapped off in an altercation on O'Connell Street during the St Patrick's Day festivities was never actually assaulted at all.. What a bizarre story.

I always had my doubts about it. Although there was a bit of hassle in town on Paddy's Day, I'd read that the number of serious crimes was in single digits!

Seriously, I crack me up..

What rhymes with crucifixion?

Jurisdiction? Drug addiction? juice and friction?

Been trying to think of a few appropriate Easter songs for the radio show on Saturday and I'm coming up with very little. Is Easter the only major celebration that we don't have popular songs about? Obviously there's no shortage of Christmas songs and Hallowe'en and Valentine's Day are well covered. The Americans have lots of songs aobut July 4th and Thanksgiving (although it occurs to me now that we don't have anything for St. Patrick's Day) and while there aren't any songs about Mother's or Father's Day, there's plenty of songs about mums and dads to fill the gap..

And yet Easter has been left alone. After much searching all I've come up with Irving Berlin's Easter Parade, which is fine but not really what I'm looking for. Elvis Perkins has 2 lovely songs - Ash Wednesday & Good Friday on his album but they're more about death and sprituality than Easter Egg hunts and fluffy bunnies so they don't really count. To say nothing of the fact that, well, you can't exactly tap your feet to them..

That's the problem, isn't it? Easter hasn't really been hijacked by the consumer industry and wrapped up for a willing audience. Not the way Christmas or Valentine's Day has and so songwriters have shied away from singing about it. There's just no rock and roll fun in crucifixion and rebirth..

That doesn't help me much though. Still not to worry - we all have our crosses to bear, right? I'll think of something..

Random? Not likely!

Somebody suggested I put my itunes random setting to less likely to see if it would shake up my random playlist. Have a look - if anything it's made the selection narrower. Hmm - could it be that 'less likely' means it's less likely to be random or does it mean that the songs are less likely to be similar? Next week I'll switch it to more likely and give you an update.. I'm sure you can't wait..

Incidentally, can things be more or less random? Isn't random a binary state? Either something is random or it's not? A bit like people who describe other people as 'complete' strangers. Again, surely a stranger is a stranger or they're not. People say the funniest things..

I know I shouldn't laugh..

Thanks to Sarah for sending this on..