i won't dance

I love 1930's and 40's movies. As a young boy I would lay in front of the television, transported to a cosy dreamworld, washing over me, a soothing smothering feeling. Me and Fred Astaire, alone in the study room, while it drizzled grey outside on a Saturday morning. Sadly the BBC doesn't show so many classics on a Saturday or Sunday mornings these days, another flaw that highlights it's sad decline in recent years.

I started to buy 1930/40's records when in my early twenties, by then I was old enough to realize that 'cool' music was what you liked, so when most of my peers and mates were into The Cure or Prince, I would croon to Al Bowly, or scat along with Satchmo.

Almost 30 years later, after those misspent days watching Bing or Fred as a boy, I still get a warming glow inside every time they show an old musical on Turner Classic Movies. It still gives me a feeling of coming home, a feeling of a world that is real, a world where I am not alone, where I am understood...a place where sentiment is a good thing. I stopped trying to find a reason for this perversion along time ago. I just know it's part of me, one of the very best parts. I found this beautiful tribute to Fred and Ginger while watching them on Youtube...Enjoy.

a white Christmas..almost

We're having a quiet Xmas this year, we usually do. Tomorrow, dinner in my mother-in-law's home for demented people, which isn't as bad as it sounds. It's the sane people I worry about - not the crazy ones. A white Christmas was almost had, the frost now melted and a more conducive climate returned that favors a pipe smoker on his balcony. Makes a good greeting card though...Merry Xmas from Dub in the Dam.

we're great traders!

Well the name of my blog is 'THE DIFFICULTIES OF AN IRISHMAN' and as you may have gathered by now a difficulty that is frequent in my mind is - the beloved Dutch. My hobbie of pipe smoking and increasingly pipe collecting highlights one such difficulty in shiny dazzling hues. Dutch shop owner's charge outrageous prices for their pipes, while often telling me, "we don't sell many pipes these days". Well surprise surprise, when they're charging 3-4 times the price they can be had for on the internet, what do you expect! Would this encourage them to bring or bargain their prices down? Hell no. "That would mean we would loose a €150 profit?". Such mind boggling inability to grasp the concept of business is truly, well, boggle minded!

Never to be beaten by the system, be it all pervasive, provincial or overwhelming, I took my modest finances to the distance shores of Ebay. And quite a victorious campaign was had. Ebay is amazing, ignore it at your peril, real market forces, in real time at the click of a mouse. It assists in sustainability (most products are second hand or unwanted). It places, at your monitored finger tips, all that you could desire, free of salesmen, shop overheads, advertising hype and rude service from people behind a counter who obsessively try to rip you off and generally just insulting to your meager intelligence.

The Math
These pipes cost me $13, $29, $51 and $89, the latter would cost $450 in a shop here. So including shipping costs and import taxes - $70, I spent a total of: $252 = €172. In Amsterdam, they would've cost in total at least €620, so a saving of €448 or $657. Yes that's right, I saved $657 on the purchase of 4 pipes on Ebay, and the dutch call themselves great 'traders'. They don't own ABN-AMRO anymore, I wonder why? Great traders, my arse. The taste of victory is like a pipe, so very sweet. Call me bitter and twisted.

PIPES ON EBAY

call me sicko

I went to see Micheal Moore's sicko yesterday. It was my wife's birthday and as it was her day, I said, "We shall do whatever you wish". Sicko was no.2 on the wish list, strange perhaps, but granted all the same. A great documentary, he gets better all the time, apart from subject matter, his films improve on all levels with each production. He highlights many things, mainly the 'undemocratic' nature of health care in the USA, but also the fear many Americans are subjected to when it comes to anything that maybe considered, in the slightest way; 'socialist'. I love Michael Moore, as a person and a spirit even more than his politics and concerns. He gives me hope in humanity when so many disappoint.

There was a women to our left who cried throughout the entire film, I assume affected in some way by a friend or relatives' illness or death in a health care system, in the USA or somewhere, that had failed. I wanted to hit the dutch that scoffed and laughed all too heartily every time Micheal spoke to a Cuban, Canadian, Frenchman or English gent who highlighted the advantages of their social systems.

The 'cloggies' laughed so much and too easily, intoxicated by a feeling of superiority every time the American way of life was exposed. They paid their €7.50 so they could get their fix of smugness and comfort, conveniently forgetting that the generous pension funds they possess are powered by their huge investments in industry and stocks. Investments that rate them the second biggest foreign investors in the the US. Investors in the very companies who's practices Moore's film was highlighting as immoral. They went home to to give their St. Nicholas presents and poems to each other...thanking God or Jung that they lived in Holland...and the woman on the left went home to cry, until she feel asleep. Call me 'Sicko', but I am not a blind man.

MICHEAL MOORE

coffee time

It's about time for a YouTube blog. A web forum member directed me to Denis Leary the American comedian, a like minded non-conformist rebel of fight'n Irish spirit. This sketch, entitled 'Coffee', speaks volumes to me. We now have 'branded' coffee, sold for crazy prices in designed coffee shops in which you can WiFi all you want, but not smoke. My pipe and its trusty companion, Strong Americano, are the few remaining vices in my sad life. I drink two big mugs in the morning, the purchased coffee displaying that FAIR TRADE label on the packet. I don't use a percolator or any other 'machine' in this ritual, just a coffee filter in a plastic holder placed over my beloved XL container. Now how ecco can you get. Enjoy the rants of the professional...