Where The Wild Things Are

I didn't read this book as a child and I confess I didn't read it as an adult because I was jealous of Maurice Sendak's mega success (hah, adult child!). Finn came home last weekend and bought the DVD. Omigod, it's amazing. This is where art meets entertainment and fun meets depth. An incredible film which sends your mind off on all kinds of tangents even as you are feeling every emotion imaginable and feasting your eyes. It's ingenious the way these big muppet-things evince emotion and call them up in you. Highly recommended!

For My German Readers

Here is the website of my dear friend Heike Klamp, one of two great roomies I met in Findhorn last year on Experience Week and with whom I went to Erraid, Findhorn's island community, this year. www.heikeklamp.de. Heike practises various types of complementary medicine - check out her website for more details - and does the most amazing foot massage you could ever dream of! (Photos taken from website)

Hiring Fair 2010

Thousands queued for an exhibition on emigration at the RDS this weekend. Canada, New Zealand and Australia were recruiting skilled workers such as nurses, HGV drivers, speech therapists, tradesmen, engineers and the like. Is this not heartbreaking? Once again we lose our best and our brightest to other countries, but this time it's not because of the economic embargo on Ireland by England which destroyed our economy in the early years of Irish independence. No, the destruction of our economy this time was caused by our own government - still in power! - and our bankers and developers - still unscathed! Shame on Ireland - the sow who eats her farrow as William Yeats once said - and most of all on the Fianna Fáil party and the bankers who have brought us to this.

Cementgate: Anglo Toxic Bank

Well our country is full of wit even if our government is full of nitwits. Go here for hilarious remarks twitted when a protestor drove his cement mixer into the gates of the Dáil with the words "Anglo Toxic Bank" painted on it. Needless to say the incident was quickly dubbed Cementgate by some wag. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0929/breaking19.html. For those who don't know, the Anglo-Irish Bank is the failed bank which the taxpayers of Ireland have been forced to keep going so that its mega-rich and politicially friendly investors don't suffer. It was run - and run into the ground - by friends and supporters of the present governing Fianna Fáil party. Of course the driver of the truck was arrested, though none of the managers of the bank have been. Here are some of my favourite remarks:
1) So you get arrested if you crash a truck into the Dáil but not if you crash the entire economy?
2) Trucky ar lá (you have to be an Irish speaker to get this one)
3) Nice headline on Clare Herald website: "Mortar Attack on Leinster House"
4) Is it just me, or is there something exciting about an actual gate being involved?
5)Dáil rushes to release statement to public that no TDs were plastered.
Yes, we are laughing all the way to the bankruptcy. :)