Trojan Invasion

Apologies for the lack of recent posting, my computer has been invaded by a Trojan Horse or some other class of animal, my IT team reliably informs me.

Normal service will resume soon, once the laptop doctor does his thing.

From the front of this weekend's Globe and Mail in Canada. Hilarious!

I noticed this hilarious story on the front page of the Globe and Mail newspaper this morning over here. It'd be interesting to see if this prank could work anywhere else in the world besides America.

"Last February, a frantic call came through to a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Manchester, N.H., at the height of the lunchtime rush. It was from corporate headquarters and it was urgent: A toxic chemical had been released through the restaurant's sprinkler system.
Employees were told to strip down and urinate on each other to neutralize the chemical.
If they did not, everyone would die.

“I need you to be strong, I need you to be brave,” a man named Jeff Anderson told his panicked staff in Manchester.
“You need to do exactly what I say,” he urged, in a faint Southern drawl.
And so they did.

Police pulled in half an hour later to a bizarre scene: Naked women, doused in each other's urine, milling about the parking lot. There was no trace of the chemical. As it turned out, there was no Jeff Anderson. The entire call had been a hoax, orchestrated by “Dex,” a twentysomething Canadian prankster, who now finds himself at the centre of a controversy that highlights how our definitions of humour are evolving in a digital age, where the Internet provides anonymity and encourages an inflated sense of importance and extra distance from the consequences of action.

Increasingly, this is becoming less of a philosophical debate. This week, a Quebec father thought it was amusing to post a video of his seven-year-old son driving on YouTube until police and child services stepped in. Only then did he acknowledge his mistake.

Dex is the founder of Pranknet, an online chat group where members devise hoaxes and broadcast them live. Members can listen in, and rate the prank as it's being pulled, with the most popular attaining the status of “epic.”

In Pennsylvania, Pranknet called a hotel guest and told him there was a gas leak. The man was told to smash the window and television screen with a toilet tank lid to prevent an explosion. Another man in Nebraska was persuaded to drive his truck through the door of a hotel lobby to deactivate a fire alarm. A front-desk clerk at another hotel drank a guest's urine, after a Pranknet caller convinced her it was cider, and that the man who brought it – who thought he was providing a urine sample for the hotel doctor – was the representative of an apple juice company.

Movie Review: Gonzo; The Life and Work of Dr Hunter S Thompson

A part of me would love to live like Hunter S Thompson.

But having neither the talent, the constitution nor the testicular fortitude to follow a path like the father of Gonzo journalism, I have to settle for the odd glimpse into his life through his articles, books and - most recently - this gem of a movie.

Told by a variety of different voices, including that of Thompson himself and his close friend Johnny Depp (who played the writer in the movie adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and takes on the role of narrator here), Gonzo details the life of journalism's truest rebel from his humble beginnings in Kentucky up to his suicide in 2005.

Thompson first gained fame and notoriety with his book 'Hell's Angels' which was written after he spent a year living and riding with the motorcycle gang, an experience which culminated in a savage beating for the writer following a disagreement with a member. After experiencing and enjoying that first taste of literary stardom in 1966, he would rarely step out of the limelight for the rest of his life.

Video and audio clips along with both dated and recent interviews are used to recall the Great Doctor's many escapades, from his running for and almost winning an election to be Sheriff of a town in Aspen to his birthing and development of Gonzo journalism. A highlight of the retrieved footage is several of Thompson's many dictated recordings, more than a few of which were made during his legendary but all-too-common benders.

It's more than a little saddening for those working in journalism now to get a glimpse at a time when reporters could run up expense bills without a worry in the world. At one stage Thompson refused a Volkswagen hired for him by Rolling Stone while in Las Vegas. Only a Cadillac would do for a man writing a story on the American Dream, he had reasoned.

Throughout the feature, Thompson's anger (whether it be at injustice, misuse of power or downright incompetence amongst politicians) is a constant and cited by many as the source of his genius. His fondness for drugs of all shapes and sizes is also regularly alluded to in the many testimonies.

The darker side of the man's psyche isn't skimmed over either with both his wives and many friends speaking of his sometimes violent mood swings and infidelities. Nor do the makers shy away from the decline in volume and quality of Thompson's writing from the 1980s onward.

In fact, Thompson's detractors - including former Hell's Angel's tormentors and Nixon aides - feature almost as prominently as those who admired him, such as former American President Jimmy Carter, author Tom Wolfe and Ralph Steadman, the artist whose paintings helped bring Thompson's Gonzo reporting and imaginings to life.

A hellraiser to the end, Hunter S Thompson was also a man of groundbreaking talent. Gonzo is a must-have collector's item for fans of the man, while also providing a handy starting point for those not yet fortunate enough to be acquainted with his undoubted genius.


Hoge Rating 5/5 (Yes I've changed the rating system, marking out of 10 required too much thought)

What I miss about Limerick

MCGOO rang me the other morning.

Well, it was morning for me.

Well, it was morning for me on a Saturday so we'll say around noon in Vancouver and 8pm in Limerick.

"Well Johnny, what's the craic bull? Is it still roasting out there? I'm packing 12 bottles of baby oil for the beach for when I get there. Two weeks better be long enough to get the tan on kid!"

The two of us chatted for a bit about his upcoming trip to Canada - which I have been made promise will be as good if not better than a week at the Galway Races which McGoo is missing in lieu of the trip across the Atlantic. Before long, he had to go as he was meeting a few of the lads in Fennessy’s for a few “creamies”.

For a few moments, I became quite jealous of McGoo, making the short walk from his house up to the corner house at the junction of South Circular Road and New Street, where he would exchange friendly but nonetheless stern abuse with the bar staff until the wee hours of the morning. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but even for a few hours it would have been nice to go up and spend one evening with the crew back home.

And that got me thinking of some of the things that I miss about Limerick which I obviously felt the need to list here. So in no particular order;

Fennessy's: One of the nicest pints in the city, not to mention great company, and the Peony Court only across the road for when nothing will sit better on top of a few pints but a Chilli Chicken without the chilli.

Thomond Park: I was still only getting used to our superb new stadium when I left and will definitely be pining for its atmosphere when the Heineken Cup starts again (particularly this season, now that the maul is back and Munster are going to rip the rest of Europe a new one).

Limerick Hurling: It's bloody typical that they've started to do well now that I'm out of the country. In fact, they'll probably win the bloody thing this year and I'll only get to watch the highlights four days later when someone finally uploads the Sunday Game on to Youtube.

Bruff RFC: Thomond Park may have doubled its capacity and become one of the finest rugby stadiums in the world last year, but at the same time a burger stand was introduced in Kilballyowen Park and that just about tips the scales in favour of the latter ground when it comes to deciding which of the two provides the better match day experience. I most likely won't even be able to watch the highlights on Youtube when we get promoted to Division One this year unless they stick a studio beside the burger stand.

The Limerick Leader: The staff there may no longer claim knowledge of me but I'm still very grateful to them all for the two great years of guidance and friendship they gave to the gobshite work experience student who couldn't write a snappy intro to save his life.

That's all for now methinks, if I've left anything out feel free to point it out.

Update: Oh good God I almost forgot. Were I to come back to Limerick for one night only, I would of course also love to fit a few minutes in with my family if I could find time between drinking pints, gorging on Chinese food, going to rugby and hurling matches and reminiscing with my old workmates!

Canada, Episode 7; The dreaded pajamas

THE LEADER'S entertertainment correspondent, OWENSY, recently complained about having to watch lads jump headfirst into piles of mud, wearing nothing but GAA shorts, at the recent Oxegen festival on which he was reporting (a.k.a. freeloading).

Ignore the fact that my ol' flower Owensy was most likely passing from the Champagne Bar to the Caviar Lounge reserved exclusively for the press when he witnessed the dung divers because, in fairness, his is a legitimate complaint. It can be irritating when your fellow festival-goers make uproarious asses of themselves and paint you and everyone else in the same moronic light.



My complaint, however, has somewhat more substance than my former esteemed colleague (from the time before I decided to mow lawns for a living). You see, my particular bone of contention paints not a few thousand festival fans as a gang of dribbling twits but our whole nation as a society of slobbish class-vacuums.



There I was on the bus home from work the other day, just about to pull up to my stop, when outside the window I saw an abomination that I thought I had left behind in Ireland.

Walking down the road, without a bit of shame, was the most blatantly Irish girl I have ever seen in my life.

I could live with her wearing the Cork goalkeepers jersey, although no girl has ever looked well wearing a GAA jersey in the history of the GAA or girls. Sorry ladies it's just a fact of life that you'll have to live with similar to me dealing with the reality that I will never look attractive in, say, hotpants.

But what really got my temple throbbing was that this little trollop was wearing her pajamas pants outside in the middle of the day, without the slightest hint of shame. Thankfully this vomitous trend hasn't caught on in Canada so I was horrified to see this wench bringing this particularly Irish failing over with her.

Once off the bus, I ran after the wench.

"No," I shouted. "No, you're not bringing this over with you. This bullshit is one of the reasons I left the country. You're outside for the love of god, wear outside clothes! Away home with you, you insufferable tramp!"

Well I wish that's what I did anyway. In reality, I just got off the bus, grinded my teeth a little and exchanged a pleasant smile with the pajamas wearer, dying a little inside in the process.

Canada, episode 6; The Hoge visits Stanley Park

TO look at the inhabitants of my house this morning, one could be forgiven for thinking there's been a Carbon Monoxide leak and I was the only one lucky enough to grab a gas mask.

Downstairs is Kielers, comatose in the living room, clutching the couch as if he expects to be flung clear at any point.

Afroman, who in fairness made it to his bed before collapsing, is not a picture of health either. Lying over the sheets on his bed, fully clothed with his arms and legs spread out as wide as possible, he looks like a cadaver waiting to be disected by a class of med students. The only sign of life is a just about noticeable tear creeping slowly down his cheek.

The Grief has done one better than the two sleeping beauties by going outside for a walk. However, his hangover has taken the form of liberal helpings of 'What am I doing with my life?' sentiments and the purpose of his stroll is to have an agonising rethink on what it's all about, possibly the worse sentence of the three.

And me? Having stayed in last night, I'm just sitting here enjoying the carnage and my imperviousness to it. Not wanting to crawl into a hole and die also means that I have the energy to put up a few pictures of my trip last weekend to Stanley Park, a 1,000 acre "evergreen oasis" located just outside Vancouver city centre.

It's not quite on the same pegging as People's Park but was fun nonetheless.