Last year's Writer's Strike has a lot to answer for. We're just now facing up to the results of the dark times when everyone in Hollywood with a grasp of realistic dialogue and narrative structure was on the picket lines, and the view isn't pretty. Three of the biggest films of the year, Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation and now Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen have shown just what you get when you make a movie with only intermittent or frantically hurried writerly support. The last of the three was my viewing choice for the evening, and while it wasn't as offensively bad as Terminator, it was an order of magnitude dumber than either of its predecessors.

Still, you can always learn something from opening yourself to new experiences.

( No Spoilers, Just Lessons )

The iPhone 3GS receives its Irish launch today, a week after it arrived in several larger and therefore more important markets. To promote it, O2 has opted for a cover sheet on the daily Metro newspaper. Said cover sheet offers four pages: outside front and back and inside front and back. So what does O2 do? It puts the exact same image (of some shiny iPhone 3GSs, which look exactly like the old iPhone 3G) and copy (saying no more than that the iPhone 3GS is the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet) on each page.

Not one word about the iPhone 3GS's new features, nor about the prices you'll pay should you opt for an O2 contract. Nor about the fact that the iPhone 3G is still available, cheaper than ever. Nope, just the same image and copy repeated four times. (The fact that "fastest, most powerful" is a tautology in computing terms just depresses me further.)

It used to be said of Apple, during Steve Jobs' wilderness years, that the Mac was a great product in the hands of an idiot company. That particular description seems to fit O2's possession of the exclusive iPhone contract very well. I think I advised O2 this time last year to fire whoever is responsible for their marketing. Well, I'd like to amend that. They should shoot them instead. It can only do them good in the long run.

Wikipedia is an awful time-sink, and I try to avoid spending all of my free time in it. Still, the occasional browse is worthwhile, because it sometimes turns up gems like this:

"The radius of a white dwarf is inversely proportional to the cube root of its mass."

Or to put it another way, the more mass you add to a white dwarf, the smaller it gets. Which, to me, is both counter-intuitive and wonderful.

I now return you to your original programming.

Over the last four weeks, I've been lucky enough to take not one, but two week-long holidays. On the first, in west Clare, I had just enough Internet connection to keep in touch with the news. On the second, in the south of Spain, I had no Internet at all. And you know what? I didn't miss it. Apart from some twitchiness on the first day, I was happy enough going without (and much more relaxed). It's nice to know that even ingrained habits can be disposed off without too much trouble.

That said, when I got back this morning, it was to face 60-70 emails and several thousand news items. So, I've been speed-skimming the latter for the last few hours, and the following is a list of the things that jumped out at me.

Steve Jobs Had a Liver Transplant: I wonder if Apple are going to get in trouble over this, given how many investors whined about disclosure over his earlier illnesses. Still, I wish him well.

Celtic Steal West Brom's Manager: Actually, I saw this in a newspaper while on holiday and it had been on the cards before I left. Still, having just been relegated, we've now lost our manager and look likely to lose several of our best players. Next season could be tough, and I worry about another period in the wilderness.

Apple are to Open a Dublin Store: Well, it's about time. Mind you, given that I can spend €22 on a return bus trip to Belfast and save €200 on a 13" MacbookPro, I may not be doing to much purchasing hereabouts.

There are Racist Thugs in Belfast: Not exactly news to anyone. There are racist thugs everywhere, of course, but the meme of "us-vs.-them" that the Troubles instilled in so much of the population makes this particularly sickening.

Iran's Elections Were a Bit of a Joke: Having just had some fairly pleasing election results over here, it was a bit disappointing to see this one come through. Still, at least the reformers were allowed to compete this time around. I suspect Obama is right when he says that although the arc of history is lengthy, it tends towards justice. And speaking of that cold-eyed killer...

Obama Swatted a Fly: Effete, wishy-washy liberal? The Republicans only wish he was. Look at his eyes as he closes in for the kill - the man's a born assassin. That fly was doomed as soon as it invaded his personal space. I'm sure North Korea has taken note. Oh, and PETA has complained. Seriously. That group's existence is now solely devoted to publicising its own existence.

So another Apple keynote speech has come and gone, leaving behind the new shiny. The basic details are easy to find: a laptop upgrade, a new OS, a new phone OS and new, faster iPhones. All very appealing, and if you want to know more, you can always go to MacRumors.

However, Apple being what it is, it's always more fun to speculate about the next big thing, and on that front, two things caught my eye: a person who wasn't there, and a product line that ended the night looking somewhat denuded.

( Groundless Speculation )

Reading "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" in the midst of election season has created a weird disjunction in my brain. While we have corruption aplenty, it's relatively meagre stuff, and the level of debauchery has been rather disappointing, glamorous airbrushed election posters of young female candidates notwithstanding. And Brian Cowen only wishes he was Richard Nixon.

Still, there's amusement to be had. Especially when arch anti-something candidate Declan Ganley demands a recount only to find that he'd been given 3,000 more votes than he should have got.

What with Mary Lou McDonald losing her Euro seat here in Dublin, it's been a good set of results all round.

Edit: Snerk.

So poor, put-upon Dermot Ahern is complaining about all the nasty "pseudo-liberals", who are being so intolerant and raising a stink about his efforts to just follow orders and fine them massive amounts of money for saying nasty things about religion. One wonders if Dermot is, even now, waiting by the phone for a call from some kettles regarding his midnight hue.

We "pseudo-liberals" are indeed intolerant, especially when it comes to enshrining intolerance for free speech in the law. Dermot seems to think that a true liberal is tolerant of everything, especially governments that fiddle while the economy burns, hand out the proceeds of a global boom to their cronies, and collaborate with the Catholic Church to hide decades of child abuse. We are indeed intolerant of things like that, which is presumably why Dermot considers us only "pseudo-liberals".

A rather forlorn-looking pigeon has been perched on a railing outside my window for the last half an hour. With its feathers ruffled to an extreme, it looks somewhat like a fluffy rugby ball, with a pair of pink feet gripping the dripping iron beneath. Not being an avian expert, I don't know how old it is, or what gender, but if I had to guess, it's the pigeon equivalent of a teenager who's just left home, dealing with the harsh world for the first time.

I know how it feels. It's one of those mornings, where you're not dealing with rain so much as water-saturated air. Dublin's rooftops are lost in a drizzled haze, and no one with any sense is outside. Only the seagulls don't mind, wheeling about in the air as they look out for abandoned scraps of food. The pigeons, meanwhile, just perch and mutter to themselves as they wait for summer to finally show up.

So I managed to get to see it at the weekend. And, after a certain amount of thought, I've come to the following conclusion: It's not meant to be taken seriously. (See this review for an example of why.)

It's a dumb blonde of a movie. Nice to look at, fun to spend a few hours with in a darkened room, but you'll feel like you've let yourself down afterwards, and your IQ will have dropped a few points in the process.

The latest topic to have the Irish blogosphere up in arms is the news that Dermot Ahern TD, Minister for Justice, is attempting to have an amendment added to the Defamation Bill, introducing an offence of "Blasphemous Libel," which would carry penalties of up to €100,000 and grant Gardai the power to use reasonable force to enter premises in search of evidence of such an offence. This has already been covered in more detail and with more clarity than I can offer, so I'm just going to offer my take on a particular part of it, blasphemer though I might be.

( Speaking Truth to Power )

It's so long ago since I recorded the episode of Eggheads that I can't even really remember what questions I was asked. I can, however, remember exactly what I was wearing, for reasons that will become clear when the show gets broadcast.

And I now know when that broadcast is going to be. This Friday, May 1st, on BBC2 at 18.00. If you fancy seeing me wearing a very dodgy shirt, feel free to tune in.

So, courtesy of the strike-happy Harristown garage, my dwelling place has been rendered somewhat more isolated than usual. That wasn't too much of a problem last night, when I could simply lurk at home and ignore the existence of the rest of the world. This morning though, getting to work involved an hour-long walk. At least it was sunny.

There was one major compensation. Part of my walk to work takes me along the canal, where it runs parallel to the Whitworth Road. About two-thirds of the way down, a pair of swans has made a nest on the bank of the canal. For the last while, one of them has been permanently seated there, while the other one forages. This morning, the swan on hatching duty was asleep, the other paddling nearby.

It won't be too long before the hidden eggs start to hatch, and the cygnets emerge. When I was younger, I would mark off the months as swans near Ardglass and Killough raised their young. Now I'm half-tempted to do the same, and make that walk to work a once-a-week event, weather permitting. Something to thank those strikers for, perhaps.

Interesting news this morning: the pilot for HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones is to be filmed later this year, in Belfast no less. The Paint Hall, formerly part of Harland & Wolff's shipbuilding yards, should allow for some magnificent sets to fit the ambition of Martin's setting. As I'm a massive fan of the books, I'm more than a little excited by this.

Now I just have to figure out how one gets to be an extra on this shoot...

Tonight The Tudors makes its return to Irish screens in the form of series three, in which yours truly appears in the important role of a Yeoman, standing in the background, wearing a funny costume and holding a big stick. I can't be certain exactly which scenes I'll be showing up in, and whether or not I'll even be visible in them, but it should be fun playing a personalised version of "Where's Wally?" (Waldo, for the Americans among you) as I watch along.

I'm going to be rather more visible in a couple of weeks, when my Eggheads appearance is shown on the BBC. That'll be either May 1 or May 4 - I'll clarify once I'm sure.

Further to that whole Jason Statham thing mentioned before, I and she who will not be named went to see Crank: High Voltage last night. Never saw the film to which it's a sequel, but by all reports it was an over-the-top slice of everything designed to offend all right-thinking people. Well, this one takes that premise and turns everything up to 11. Seriously, if you're easily offended by anything, avoid it. If not, you'll find it hard to avoid mean-spirited giggles throughout.

Details of the premise can be found elsewhere, so I'll stick to saying that this is the essence of videogame moviemaking. Statham's character is effectively indestructible, apart from the dodgy ticker that requires him to power himself up every so often, resulting in a manic spree of violence. No character has any real depth, only an array of amusing quirks, and the main purpose of the plot is to shoehorn in as much action-based insanity as possible.

It's outrageous, offensive and tasteless to the nth degree. If that sounds appealing to you, I'd advise you to go for it.

The weekend just past was a relatively quiet one, and seeing as this state of affairs is somewhat unusual, I took the unusual step (for me) of filling some of the gaps with movies. Not too many, as computer games remain an ongoing distraction. Still, three isn't too bad a score.

Without further ado, in reverse order of everything...

( The Good, the Bad and the Ugly )

I have decided that Hollywood needs to create an action movie that co-stars Vin Diesel and Jason Statham. Either as good guy/bad guy or as co-protagonists. Just as long as they spend as much time as possible on screen together. The sheer amount of balding, growling machismo should create some kind of cinematic singularity, after which no films other than sequels to "The Fast and the Furious" and "The Transporter" will be possible.

Preferably it'll be a science fiction film too, but I'm not picky.

Other countries get their "-gate" scandals from financial or political shennanigans. We get ours from a practical joke and media servility.*

For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the news reports, a few days ago, some practical jokers snuck into art galleries in Dublin and added to their collections, in the form of some paintings of Taoiseach Brian Cowen au naturale. The paintings stayed up for 20-30 minutes, until security spotted them and had them removed. The gardai were called in, but a spokesperson for the Royal Hibernian Academy said that they "don't want to make more of it than it is."

So far, so funny. An amusing story to tag onto the end of a news programme, as both RTE and BBC presumably treated it. Certainly, the story, as reported on the RTE web site, has a gentle tongue in cheek tone.

However, much like rats, politicians are most vicious when cornered. During a time when they're taking flak from all sides, Fianna Fail weren't about to let a bit of fun at the expense of their glorious leader go unpunished. A swift complaint saw RTE not only apologise abjectly but also remove the offending reports from the record.

So who comes out worst from this? Not the politicians: at this point in the game, no one expects any better from them. Not the offending artist, who was merely showing admirable entrepreneurial talent in a downturn. No, it's RTE that most clearly revealed its lack of backbone by refusing to contemplate standing up to political pressure.

This too at a time when the Irish broadcaster is facing complaints about some of its comedy taking on easy targets. Having gently ribbed someone with actual power, they folded like a house of cards. Unsurprisingly, this has made some people rather angry (NSFW language and images).

When times are bad, humour (like coffee, the blacker the better) offers a useful safety valve for the sort of rage that a lot of people are feeling towards the political and business establishment at the moment. The establishment, rightly, sees that being laughed at diminishes their aura of superiority, and when that aura is already crumbling, they stamp down on the laughter. Perhaps in this case, perhaps in something else to come, they might find that they crack right through the thin crust of humour to the anger beneath.

*I'm not sure any name has emerged from this affair at all yet. I chose the above one for its resemblance to a popular brand of baby food, which seems appropriate given the behaviour of some of the principals.

[Edit] It seems to have been the work of a single artist, which I hadn't been sure about. Chartophylax has more, including some nice links to YouTube video of the offending material.

No, not a second marriage: expecting Ticketmaster to be able to organize something slightly more complex than a piss-up in a brewery.

If you're going to use a captcha system, please test it on a variety of platforms. If you set a maximum purchase limit of four tickets, don't change it to six several minutes after you start selling. And don't make people wait four or five minutes to hear that the tickets they opted for are no longer available and they'll have to go back and start again.

I could explain how I feel about them right now, but I suspect such language would get this journal shut down.

After a week-and-a-half, I have returned to the working life, accompanied by unseasonal weather. Seriously - it was like summer looking out of the window. Not so much being out in it though: the sun couldn't quite heat this chilly island up. Promising nonetheless.

( Where I've Been All This Time )